Like children who were born at term but who were small for gestational age, children who were born prematurely have an isolated reduction in insulin sensitivity, which may be a risk factor for type 2 diabetes mellitus.

This is the first nationally representative survey to report the health and well-being of students who report being transgender. We found that transgender students and those reporting not being sure are a numerically small but important group. Transgender students are diverse and are represented across demographic variables, including their sexual attractions. Transgender youth face considerable health and well-being disparities. It is important to address the challenging environments these students face and to increase access to responsive services for transgender youth.

Sleep duration in 7-year-old children varies considerably among individuals. The duration is affected by weekday, season, and having younger siblings. Importantly, short sleep duration was shown to be an independent risk factor for obesity/overweight.

OBJECTIVE The objective was to determine the safety and efficacy of a fish oil-based intravenous lipid emulsion (IFE) in the treatment of PNALD. SUMMARY AND BACKGROUND DATA Parenteral nutrition-associated liver disease (PNALD) can be a lethal complication in children with short bowel syndrome (SBS). IFE based on soybean oil administered with parenteral nutrition (PN) may contribute to its etiology. METHODS We performed an open-labeled trial of a fish-oil IFE in 42 infants with SBS who developed cholestasis (serum direct bilirubin > 2 mg/dL) while receiving soybean IFE. Safety and efficacy outcomes were compared with those from a contemporary cohort of 49 infants with SBS and cholestasis whose PN course included soybean IFE only. The primary efficacy end-point was time to reversal of cholestasis (direct bilirubin ≤2 mg/dL). RESULTS Three deaths and 1 liver transplantation occurred in the fish oil cohort, compared to 12 deaths and 6 transplants in the controls (P=0.005). Among survivors not transplanted during PN, cholestasis reversed while receiving PN in 19/38 patients in the fish oil cohort vs. 2/36 patients in the controls. Based on Cox models, subjects receiving fish oil-IFE experienced reversal of cholestasis 6 times faster (95% CI=2.0,37.3) than those receiving soybean IFE. The provision of fish oil IFE was not associated with hypertriglyceridemia, coagulopathy, essential fatty acid deficiency. Moreover, hypertriglyceridemic events and abnormal INR levels were more common among controls. CONCLUSIONS Fish oil IFE is safe, may be effective in treating PNALD, and may reduce mortality and organ transplantation rates in children with SBS.

Efforts to understand and support the process of help seeking by victims of intimate partner violence are of considerable urgency if we are to design systems and responses that are capable of actively and appropriately meeting the needs of victims. Using data from the New Zealand Violence Against Women Study, which drew from a representative general population sample of women aged 18 to 64 years, the authors report on the help-seeking behaviors of the women who had ever in their lifetime experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner (n = 956). More than 75% of respondents reported that they had told someone about the violence, indicating that it is not necessarily a "secret and private" problem. However, more than 40% of women indicated that no one had helped them. Informal sources of support (family and friends) were most frequently told about the violence but not all provided helpful responses. Fewer women told formal sources of help such as police, health care providers, and not all provided helpful responses. Women's reasons for seeking help and for leaving violent relationships were similar and included "could not endure more," being badly injured, fear or threat of death, and concern for children. Women's reasons for staying in or returning to violent relationships included perception of the violence as "normal/not serious," her emotional investment in the relationship, or staying for the sake of the children. The findings suggest that broader community outreach is required to ensure that family and friends are able to provide appropriate support for women in abusive relationships who are seeking help. Continued improvement in institutional responses is also required.

BackgroundGH therapy requires daily injections over many years and compliance can be difficult to sustain. As growth hormone (GH) is expensive, non-compliance is likely to lead to suboptimal growth, at considerable cost. Thus, we aimed to assess the compliance rate of children and adolescents with GH treatment in New Zealand.MethodsThis was a national survey of GH compliance, in which all children receiving government-funded GH for a four-month interval were included. Compliance was defined as ≥85% adherence (no more than one missed dose a week on average) to prescribed treatment. Compliance was determined based on two parameters: either the number of GH vials requested (GHreq) by the family or the number of empty GH vials returned (GHret). Data are presented as mean ± SEM.Findings177 patients were receiving GH in the study period, aged 12.1±0.6 years. The rate of returned vials, but not number of vials requested, was positively associated with HVSDS (p<0.05), such that patients with good compliance had significantly greater linear growth over the study period (p<0.05). GHret was therefore used for subsequent analyses. 66% of patients were non-compliant, and this outcome was not affected by sex, age or clinical diagnosis. However, Maori ethnicity was associated with a lower rate of compliance.InterpretationAn objective assessment of compliance such as returned vials is much more reliable than compliance based on parental or patient based information. Non-compliance with GH treatment is common, and associated with reduced linear growth. Non-compliance should be considered in all patients with apparently suboptimal response to GH treatment.

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Response rates for epidemiologic studies have dropped dramatically over the past several decades, from rates of more than 90% in the 1950s to those that often struggle to reach 70%, and frequently are much lower.1 The obvious question for editors and reviewers of scientific papers is: "what is an acceptable response rate in the 21 st Century?" This paper provides a discussion of this important and timely question. It suggests that there should be an expectation that response rates should be routinely, and accurately, reported in population-based studies, but argues that response rate alone may not be sufficient evidence to judge study quality and/or validity. It suggests that, in addition to reporting the response rates, requiring authors to disclose any known details about their non-participants, attempts to improve participation, and the denominators used to calculate response rates should assist editors and reviewers to assess the validity and utility of study findings more accurately and make decisions about their relevance for their readers.