Parents' drinking influences teenagers

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — When it comes to alcohol, many teenagers may take a cue from their parents, new research suggests.

In a study of more than 4,700 teenagers, researchers found that parents' drinking habits appeared to influence their children in both direct and indirect ways. In the first case, teenagers seemed to simply follow the example of a parent who drank excessively, the study found. \In the second case, many teens seemed to view parents' drinking as a sign of lax parenting, and this, in turn, affected their likelihood of drinking.

Past studies have found that parents can be a strong influence on their children's odds of drinking. The current findings shed light on how this plays out, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Shawn J. Latendresse, of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

"I think that this is an important finding for parents in that it raises an awareness of their multifaceted influence on the drinking behaviours of their adolescents," Latendresse told Reuters Health.

Knowing how they influence their kids, he noted, may encourage parents to seek help for their own drinking problems, or in improving their parenting skills.

Latendresse and his colleagues report the findings in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

The study included 4,731 Finnish teenagers and their parents; all were part of an ongoing health study of twins born between 1983 and 1987.

Blinks may spot foetal alcohol syndrome

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — Children exposed to alcohol in the womb have impaired eye blinks compared with their unexposed peers, researchers found in a study they conducted.

Children exposed to alcohol before birth may develop foetal alcohol syndrome — a collection of birth defects and developmental problems that can include delayed growth, significant learning disabilities and abnormal facial features. However, not all children with foetal alcohol syndrome are born with the distinctive facial anomalies of the condition.

Writing in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, researchers say their findings indicate that deficits in so-called eye blink conditioning, or EBC, can identify children with probable foetal alcohol syndrome.

"Animal studies have shown that binge consumption of alcohol during pregnancy impairs EBC," study investigator Dr. Sandra W. Jacobson, of Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, explained in a written statement. "We wanted to see if we could use the EBC paradigm to identify underlying or subcortical (brain) deficits that are specifically affected by prenatal alcohol exposure in children," she said.

The study involved 98 five-year-old children in Cape Town, South Africa who had eye blink testing. This area was selected because of its known high incidence of foetal alcohol syndrome.

Overall, 64 of the children were born to heavy drinking mothers, including 12 who met criteria for foetal alcohol syndrome and 18 who met criteria for partial foetal alcohol syndrome.

Drug doesn't prevent migraine after all

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — Contrary to some reports, the anti-epilepsy drug oxcarbazepine does not appear to prevent migraine headaches, new research suggests.

Anti-epilepsy drugs have been used for the prevention of migraine, Dr. Stephen Silberstein of the Jefferson Headache Center in Philadelphia, and associates note in the journal Neurology — and reports have suggested that oxcarbazepine would be effective as well.

In a study lasting almost five months, the investigators randomly assigned 170 men and women with a history of migraine to a daily dose of oxcarbazepine or inactive placebo. Both groups included people who had three to nine migraine attacks within a month.

Results showed no difference between the oxcarbazepine and placebo groups in the change in the number of migraine attacks from the beginning to the end of the study.

Similarly, the severity of migraine attacks and the amount of acute rescue medication required was not affected by treatment allocation.

"The results of this trial do not support preliminary data which had suggested oxcarbazepine was effective in preventing migraine," Silberstein noted in a written statement.

Kids of abused mothers visit ER more often

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — Children whose mothers experience severe abuse at the hands of an intimate partner are more likely to wind up in hospital emergency departments, and their increased risk may persist for up to three years after the abuse has ended, new research shows.

"It appears that even when the abuse ends, children's health and health care use may be continued to be affected," Dr. Megan H. Bair-Merritt of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, the study's lead investigator, told Reuters Health. "That has implications for how we think about designing screening and interventions for abused women and their children."

Bair-Merritt and her colleagues looked at data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being on more than 2,500 children whose families had been reported to Child Protective Services in 1999 and 2000 to investigate whether exposure to intimate partner violence would affect how frequently children went to the emergency department or were hospitalized. Mothers had reported whether or not they had been abused at the study's outset, and the surveyors had followed up with families 18 and 36 months later.

At both time points, the researchers report in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, children whose mothers had reported being victims of severe intimate partner violence were about twice as likely as other children to have visited the emergency department.

Drug combo treats severe acne in women

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — The oral contraceptive Yasmin, plus a low-dose of the diuretic spironolactone, is a safe and effective treatment for women with severe facial acne, according to the findings of a small study.

Hormones can play a role in the development of acne. "Several studies have demonstrated that combined oral contraceptives can be an effective treatment for acne in women," Dr. Aleksandar Krunic from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, and colleagues point out in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

The researchers therefore examined the safety and efficacy of acne treatment using both spironolactone and Yasmin — a combined contraceptive containing oestrogen and a version of progestin called drospirenone — in 27 women with severe facial acne. At the end of the study, 11 percent of women were entirely clear of acne lesions, 74 percent had excellent improvement, 7.4 percent had mild improvement, and 7.4 percent had no change.

There were no reports of significant weight gain or menstrual cycle irregularities. There were no side effects severe enough to necessitate discontinuation of either of the medications. The combination of spironolactone plus oestrogen and drospirenone is "attractive for control of moderate to severe, hormonally-influenced female acne," Krunic's team concluded.