Worth Noting Research Cites Reduced Risk from Mercury in Vaccines Coincident with the airing on ABC television January 31 of a program in which a fictional jury compensated a fictional mother for autism allegedly caused by mercury in a vaccine given to her son, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a research report January 30 showing that mercury-containing preservatives once used in childhood vaccines "have always been safe." Researchers reporting in the February 2008 issue of the journal Pediatrics said new studies show that infants’ bodies expel the form of mercury present in the preservative thimerosal "much faster than originally thought," thereby leaving little chance for a progressive build-up of the metal. "This debunks the great myth, believed by both parents and many pediatricians, that the gauntlet of thimerosal-containing shots many infants received in the 1990s has put them at risk for developmental disorders," researchers said. Thimerosal, a bacteria-killing substance used as a preservative in vaccines since the 1930s, is now banned in the United States but is widely used in other countries. In their studies, researchers compared ethyl mercury used in vaccines to its better-understood chemical cousin, methyl mercury, which is associated with eating fish, and found that the body rids itself of the kind of mercury found in thimerosal more than 10 times faster than it removes "the kind one might encounter in a Friday night fish fry." At the end of the TV program that featured the autism charges, ABC ran a notice that the episode of "Eli Stone" was fictional and involved no real persons or companies, and referred listeners to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for information about autism. -------------------------------- CMS Details Ways to Avoid 'Crowd Out' in SCHIPNoting requests by states to extend eligibility under the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to children in families with income levels above 250 percent of the federal poverty level, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last month outlined steps states should take to prevent "crowd out"--the situation that happens when parents drop private health insurance in order to enroll their children in SCHIP. The CMS said the potential for crowd-out is greater for higher income beneficiaries, and it said states should have in place at least five general crowd-out strategies, including: • Imposing waiting periods between dropping private coverage and enrollment in SCHIP; The CMS said reducing the potential for crowd-out is essential in order to focus SCHIP on "the core population of uninsured targeted low-income children."• Imposing cost-sharing in approximation to the cost of private coverage; • Monitoring health insurance status at the time of application; • Verifying family insurance status through insurance databases, and/or • Preventing employers from changing dependent coverage policies that would favor a shift to public coverage. -------------------------------- FDA Warns on Seizure Drugs Patients across age groups who take antiepileptic drugs to prevent seizures in conditions such as epilepsy and bipolar disorder may be at increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced January 31. The FDA said patients should not stop taking the drugs but should be monitored for signs of suicidal thinking. The agency said it is working with manufacturers of antiepileptic drugs to include warnings on their labels of the newly identified risks. Drugs analyzed by the FDA include widely used medications such as Topamax, Carbatrol, Neurontin, and Trileptal. Further information for health care professionals is available at www.fda.gov/cder/drug/InfoSheets/HCP/antiepileptics. -------------------------------- The following information appeared during the month of January 2008 in the News Alerts section of the website of the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools, at www.healthinschools.org. FDA Cautions on OTC Cough, Cold Medications for Children The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday issued a Public Health Advisory warning that over-the-counter cough and cold medicines should not be used to treat infants and children under the age of 2 years because "serious and potentially life-threatening side effects can occur from such use." In the same announcement, the FDA said it is reviewing whether such OTC medicines can safely be used for children 2 to 11 years old. Pending completion of that review, the FDA recommends that parents and caregivers of older children should carefully follow dosing directions on any OTC cough or cold medicine and should understand that the products will not cure or shorten the duration of the common cold. Further information on the FDA's recommendations on use of OTC cough and cold medicines for children is available at www.fda.gov/cder/drug/advisory/cough_cold¬_2008.htm. January 24, 2008 House Fails to Override Veto of SCHIP Trying again to get a reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) through Congress, the House of Representatives yesterday failed by 15 votes to override President Bush’s veto of a bill that would have added $35 billion to the popular state/federal program over the next five years. The 260 to 152 vote, in which all House Democrats and all but 42 of Republicans voted to override, left the House 15 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to overcome a veto. Democratic leaders cited a current "sour turn" in the economy as an added reason to support the SCHIP expansion, and they vowed to bring the SCHIP reauthorization up again in this session of Congress. SCHIP is currently funded through March 2009 under emergency legislation passed by Congress last year. January 29, 2008 AAP Calls for Cancellation of Fictional TV Episode With Vaccine/Autism Link The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has called on the ABC network to cancel an episode of the program “Eli Stone”scheduled to air Thursday this week, because the episode features a lawsuit in which attorneys for parents argue successfully that vaccines caused their child’s autism. Airing the program could result in a "tragic decline in immunization rates" with possible serious consequences to the health of America's children, the AAP said. In a January 25 letter to the president of the Disney-ABC Television Group and the creators and executives of the "Eli Stone" program, the AAP noted that parents often trust the health information presented on fictional television shows. If the program airs, the ABC "will bear responsibility for the needless suffering and potential death of children from parental decisions not to immunize based on the content of the episode," the letter said. The AAP urged that if a decision is made to go ahead with airing the episode, the network should include a disclaimer that no mercury is used as a preservative in routinely offered childhood vaccines and no scientific link exists between vaccines and autism. January 30, 2008 Emergency Department Visits Linked to Cough and Cold Medication An estimated 7,000 children ages 11 and younger are treated in hospital emergency rooms each year because they have ingested cough and cold medications, sometimes without their parents' knowledge, according to an article published in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics. Two-thirds of those visits involved children between the ages of 2 and 5 years, and 80 percent of the events for this age group were from unsupervised ingestions. Most of the children did not require hospital admission, but one-fourth needed additional treatment to eliminate the medicine from their bodies. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted today that cold and cough medications marketed to infants and toddlers under the age of 2 have recently been withdrawn from sale, and the CDC is currently reviewing the safety of such medications for children between 2 and 11 years old. The cough and cold medications examined in the Pediatrics study included decongestants (for unclogging a stuffy nose), expectorants (for lessening mucus so that it can be coughed up), antitussives (for quieting coughs), and histamines (for sneezing and runny nose). |
