Even Low Levels of Lead Exposure May Worsen Academic Performance: Study
Academic achievement among adolescents may be affected by early childhood lead exposure at much lower levels than previously assumed, according to a new study.
Just a small climb in blood concentrations of this toxic metal — still within the range currently deemed acceptable by public health agencies — was associated with worse performance on standardized tests, scientists found in the study, published Wednesday in Environmental Health.
“Children’s exposure to lead has long been recognized as harmful to their health and neurodevelopment,” wrote the University of Iowa research team. “The present work provides further evidence to support that there are no safe levels of lead and that there is a need to continue to reduce or eliminate lead exposure,” the scientists warned.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has historically published health guidelines for blood lead levels, lowering it in 2021 from 5 μg/dL to 3.5 μg/dL. Yet the CDC and other health agencies also recognize that lower blood levels — below that 3.5 μg/dL bar — can still be harmful to child development, the authors noted.
Preschool BMI Can Predict Childhood Obesity Risk
U.S. News and World Report reported:
Preschoolers who don’t naturally lose weight are more likely to develop full-fledged childhood obesity by age nine, a new study says. Most kids tend to see their body-mass index (BMI) decline between ages 1 and 6, before starting to slowly gain weight as they grow, researchers reported recently in JAMA Network Open. (BMI is an estimate of body fat based on height and weight.)
But just under 11% of kids see their BMI remain the same between ages 1 and 3.5, researchers found. After that, from age 3.5 to 9, their weight rises rapidly. Kids in that group were much more likely to develop childhood obesity, with an average BMI greater than 99% of their peers, researchers found.
“The fact that we can identify unusual BMI patterns as early as age 3.5 shows how critical early childhood is for preventing obesity,” lead researcher Chang Liu, an assistant professor of psychology at Washington State University, said in a news release.
A Genetic Variation May Explain Why Some Children Exposed to Diabetes in Utero Become Obese and Others Don’t
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus reported:
Children exposed to gestational diabetes in utero with a specific variation of a common gene are at a higher risk of becoming overweight or obese during childhood, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
The study was published today in the journal Diabetes Care.
Scientists have long known that exposure to gestational diabetes is a strong predictor for both childhood obesity and diabetes. “But it’s not infallible,” said the study’s lead author Kylie Harrall, Ph.D., who did the research while at CU Anschutz but is now an assistant research professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “Some children with in utero exposure to gestational diabetes never develop obesity.”
Previous studies have shown that polymorphisms or common variations of the gene were associated with body mass index (BMI) trajectories across childhood, insulin sensitivity and insulin secretion. The researchers examined 464 children from the EPOCH study group, a collection of parents and their offspring monitored by researchers to determine the effects of gestational diabetes on the metabolic health of children.
U.S. Moms Are Experiencing a Sharp Decline in Mental Health
Mothers in the U.S. are facing more widespread mental health struggles. That’s according to a new study published by JAMA Internal Medicine, out this week.
The research, which took place from 2016 to 2023, showed mental health declining, as self-reported by respondents. Of the 198,417 female parents of children 17 and under who were surveyed, only 25.8% reported “excellent” mental health in 2023. Just eight years earlier, 38.4% could say the same.
Mothers who described their mental health as “good” rose from 18.8% to 26.1%, but so did those who describe it as fair/poor, which went from 5.5% to 8.5%. Mothers reported lower rates of “excellent” physical health, too, which went from 28% to 23.9%. “Good” physical health rose from 24.3% to 28.1%, and “fair/poor” physical health didn’t change significantly.
It’s certainly not the first time we’ve heard about parental mental health worsening in recent years. In 2024, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published a stark warning on the decline of parental mental health in America. “Forty-one percent of parents say that most days they are so stressed they cannot function, and 48% say that most days their stress is completely overwhelming compared to other adults (20% and 26%, respectively),” Murthy wrote in the study.
Millions of US Children Have Parents With Substance Use Disorder, and the Consequences Are Staggering — New Research
About 1 in 4 U.S. children — nearly 19 million — have at least one parent with substance use disorder. This includes parents who misuse alcohol, marijuana, prescription opioids or illegal drugs. Our estimate reflects an increase of over two million children since 2020 and an increase of 10 million from an earlier estimate using data from 2009 to 2014.
Those are the key findings from a new study my colleagues and I published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. To arrive at this estimate, our team used data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health in 2023, the most recently released year of data. Nearly 57,000 people ages 12 and up responded.
As a researcher who studies substance use in adolescents and young adults, I know these children are at considerable risk for the disorder, and other mental health issues, such as behavioral problems and symptoms of anxiety and depression.
