FRIDAY, Dec. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Restricting the availability of unhealthy snacks in elementary schools led to a small increase in fruit and vegetable consumption among fifth-graders, a new study found.

The roughly 3 percent increase in fruit and vegetable intake among those children in schools that restricted the availability of snacks was still significant, said study co-author Edward A. Frongillo, chairman of the University of South Carolina's department of health promotion, education and behavior.

When school policies limit the availability of high-fat and high-sugar snack foods, even a small percentage increase in fruit and vegetable consumption among fifth-graders means the policy may affect a fairly large number of children throughout the school, Frongillo said.

The findings were published in the January 2009 issue of The Journal of Nutrition.

The study surveyed 10,285 fifth-graders at 2,065 elementary schools nationwide. School administrators reported on snack-restriction policies and snack availability from vending machines, school stores, snack bars and cafeterias.

The children themselves reported on their fruit and vegetable consumption for the entire day, not just during school hours and not just snacks.

"What the data are saying is that children's experience in one part of their day is having an impact on the whole of the day," Frongillo said. "The implication isn't that there are bad ways to provide food to children. The real issue is, are we modeling in the foods we make available to children what they should be eating?"

Lona Sandon, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, challenged that theory about children's eating habits.

"In elementary school, they really model [follow] what their parents are doing. Once they get into junior high, they may begin to make a little bit more choices on their own," she said.

If parents don't eat fruits and vegetables at home, their children "are probably not going to start eating them in school," added Sandon, who is a registered dietitian and an assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

"Snack policies are not intended to make them eat more fruits and vegetables. They're intended to cut down on added sugar and calories that lead to childhood obesity," she said.

Sandon also said school cafeteria services get an "awfully bad rap. The kids are only eating one meal at school, and they are only at school one third of their day."

Snack policies have become part of the national debate on childhood obesity. A recent Temple University study showed that three-quarters of middle schools in their nationwide sample of 42 schools have vending machines that dispense snacks and sugared drinks.

Another study earlier this year by Mathematica Policy Research in Cambridge, Mass., found that only about 17 percent of elementary schools have vending machines, while 82 percent of middle schools and 97 percent of high schools have them.

School breakfasts and lunches that receive federal subsidies have to meet federal nutrition guidelines, said Sonya Jones, a co-author of the new study and an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina department of health promotion, education and behavior.

"Elementary school meals sort of reflect what we think a healthy lunch or breakfast looks like, and children are developing those habits as part of their development," she said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on childhood obesity.

FRIDAY, Dec. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Almost 75 percent of children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes have insufficient levels of vitamin D, researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston report.

A deficit in vitamin D can lead to bone problems later in life, especially among those with type 1 diabetes. While vitamin D is usually gotten from exposure to sunlight or from the diet, researchers suggest that supplements are needed to boost vitamin D levels.

"We found in children with type 1 diabetes a pretty significant level of vitamin D insufficiency -- much more than we had expected to find," said lead researcher Dr. Britta Svoren, an instructor in pediatrics.

Diabetes is associated with a reduction in bone mineral density, which can make bones more fragile, Svoren noted. Vitamin D deficiency can increase the risk of fracture in these children later in life, she added. In addition, vitamin D may have a role in the risk for developing type 1 diabetes.

Moreover, many children throughout the world without type 1 diabetes have vitamin D deficiency, Svoren said.

The report was published in the January issue of The Journal of Pediatrics.

For the study, Svoren's team measured vitamin D levels in 128 children with type 1 diabetes. The children were between 1.5 and 17.5 years old.

The researchers found that 61 percent of the children had insufficient levels of vitamin D, and 15 percent had a deficiency in vitamin D, meaning their vitamin D levels were severely low.

In fact, only 24 percent of the children had sufficient vitamin D levels.

The lowest vitamin D levels were seen among the oldest children. Among adolescents, 85 percent had inadequate levels of the vitamin, Svoren noted.

"One of the things that might be going on is that, for a lot of children and adolescents, the primary source of vitamin D is through vitamin D-fortified milk," Svoren said. "The problem is that a lot of teenagers with type 1 diabetes, rather than drinking milk, a lot of these individuals are probably drinking increased amounts of sugar-free colas."

Svoren recommended that these patients take a multivitamin and at least 400 IU of vitamin D daily.

Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine, said that vitamin D is important for all children.

"A growing body of research suggests the importance of vitamin D in many aspects of health, far beyond the long-established role in bone development and preservation," Katz said. "But the role of vitamin D in bone health remains crucial, and perhaps that much more so in groups at high risk of bone-thinning and injury. Such groups include postmenopausal women, those with kidney disease, and children with type 1 diabetes."

Whether or not supplementing vitamin D would prevent all diabetes-related bone disease in diabetic children, the practice makes sense, particularly in light of a recent American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation doubling the intake of vitamin D for all children, Katz said.

"All children should get ample vitamin D, at least 400 IU daily, from some combination of sun exposure, dairy products, and/or supplements," Katz said. "Those at high risk of deficiency, but not all children, should have levels monitored."

More information

For more on type 1 diabetes, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

MONDAY, Dec. 8 (HealthDay News) -- It's generally safe to stop giving anti-seizure medication to children with epilepsy who've achieved seizure-freedom while on the medication, because these children aren't at high risk of later developing intractable epilepsy, a Mayo Clinic study finds.

Intractable epilepsy, which affects about 10 percent of children with epilepsy, is a condition in which medications alone don't control seizures and in which seizures have a disabling effect on the patient's quality of life.

"It is often recommended that children with epilepsy who become seizure-free on anti-seizure medications be withdrawn from the drugs to avoid side effects of long-term use. Those potential side effects include cognitive slowing, incoordination, weight change, behavioral decline, and liver damage," pediatric neurologist Dr. Katherine Nickels said in a Mayo news release. "However, few previous studies had examined the risk of intractable epilepsy following withdrawal of anti-seizure medication, and the reported risks varied widely."

In this study, Nickels and colleagues reviewed the records of 152 children, ages 1 month to 16 years, who were diagnosed with new-onset epilepsy between 1990 and 2000 and treated with anti-seizure medication. Of those children, 56 (37) percent achieved seizure-freedom and were taken off their medication.

After an average follow-up of eight years, 20 of the 56 children experienced at least one seizure recurrence. Fifteen of those 20 children re-started treatment with anti-seizure medication. Eight of those 15 achieved seizure-freedom within one year, two achieved seizure-freedom after two years, and three developed intractable epilepsy. Overall, intractable epilepsy developed in 5 percent of the 56 children who were taken off anti-seizure medication following seizure-freedom, the study found.

"The risk of children developing intractable epilepsy after withdrawal of anti-seizure medication was only five percent, which is similar to the risk of intractable epilepsy at the time of initial diagnosis of epilepsy in children," Nickels said. "Therefore, the children who achieve seizure-freedom on anti-seizure medication should be considered for withdrawal without high risk of intractable epilepsy."

The study was to be presented Dec. 7 in Seattle at the annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society.

More information

The Epilepsy Foundation has more about epilepsy.

MONDAY, Dec. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Premature infants often have lower-than-normal blood pressure that persists during the first six months of life and may be one reason these infants are more prone to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), Australian researchers suggest.

One theory of the cause of SIDS is a profound drop in blood pressure during sleep, from which the infant cannot recover.

"Premature babies are at increased risk for SIDS, and we investigated a possible mechanism of how these babies could be at increased risk," explained lead researcher Rosemary S.C. Horne, of the Ritchie Centre for Baby Health Research at the Monash Institute of Medical Research at Monash University in Melbourne.

For the study, Horne's team monitored the heart rates of 25 premature infants, comparing them with 20 infants born at term. The researchers looked at the infants' blood pressure at two to four weeks, two to three months, and five to six months.

They found that preterm infants had lower blood pressure during sleep compared with normal-term infants. This was true during all the periods the blood pressure was measured.

Systolic blood pressures in preterm infants were 11 mm Hg to 14 mm Hg lower than in full-term infants, Horne said. "This may be clinically significant," she noted.

"We hypothesize that if blood pressure is already low in preterm babies, then if there was an event during sleep that made it fall even further they may be at risk of a profound drop in blood pressure," Horne said.

"In addition, this may explain the risk of preterm babies having an increased risk of SIDS and it may also indicate that these preterm babies, although they appear well and healthy, may have long-term alterations in their cardiovascular control," she said.

The findings were published in the December issue of Pediatrics.

Dr. Warren G. Guntheroth, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, doesn't think low blood pressure is a cause of SIDS. He believes the trouble lies with breathing problems.

"I do not believe there is enough evidence that control of blood pressure is inadequate just because the systolic pressure in preemies is lower than average," Guntheroth said. "This may well be because they are small."

Preemies do have pulmonary problems, of course, and it's likely that this accounts for an increase in SIDS, Guntheroth said. "The pulmonary problems may induce a degree of low oxygen that can increase the frequency of apnea with bradycardia, but that is a very basic response that does not indicate an immaturity of control of the cardiovascular system," he said.

Another SIDS expert also said it's not known whether low blood pressure increases the risk of SIDS.

"The unresolved question is whether these differences in blood pressure have any relevance for the increased risk for SIDS that preterms have -- that's unclear," said Dr. Carl E. Hunt, an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, in Bethesda, Md.

"The extent to which the inability to recover normal blood pressure is a precipitating event for SIDS, we have no idea," said Hunt, who's also a director at the American SIDS Institute. "It's difficult to prove and it has not been proven."

More information

For more on SIDS, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.