If pregnant women stop smoking, babies are happier

WASHINGTON, March 12 (Reuters) — Mothers who stop smoking while pregnant tend to have cheerier, more adaptable babies, British researchers reported.

Babies of women who continued to smoke while pregnant were notably grumpy, and the researchers believe that mothers who can muster the effort to kick the habit are also caring more for their babies in other ways.

Babies of non-smokers also more temperamental than babies born to quitters, the researchers found — which they said suggested that mothers who suspend smoking are doing something special.

Tobacco can affect the growth of a foetus and has been shown to also affect children if they breathe in their mothers' secondhand smoke.

But Dr. Kate Pickett at Britain's University of York thinks her team is on to something more. They have been following 18,000 British babies born between 2000 and 2002, as well as their mothers, who are taking part in a larger study.

They asked the mothers a number of questions about their babies' temperaments.

"There are things like whether or not a child is receptive to new things, whether they are frightened of strangers, whether their mood is cheerful or not," Pickett said in a telephone interview.

The mothers were classified as heavy or light smokers, never-smokers or quitters. The women who quit had noticeably more easygoing babies, Pickett and colleagues reported in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

"It's a significant association. We can be sure it's not due to chance," Pickett said.

"What we think: quitting smoking is a really difficult thing to do at any time. And we do know that most women who quit smoking when they are pregnant start smoking again afterwards," she said.

People who can quit smoking tobacco — one of the most addictive substances known — may pass on their genetic traits to their babies, the researchers said.

Psyllium doesn't reduce heart-risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — Daily fibre supplementation with psyllium does not reduce levels of an inflammatory protein connected to heart disease in people who are overweight or obese, new research indicates — in contrast to previous research that found lower inflammation in people with high fibre intake.

"The current study does not negate those previous studies, but rather, it emphasises that people are likely to benefit most from fibre ingested as part of a healthy diet, and not as a separate supplement," Dr. Dana E. King told Reuters Health.

In a study lasting three months, King and colleagues at the Medical University of South Carolina, assigned 162 overweight or obese adults without heart disease to take psyllium supplements (seven or 14 grams daily) or no supplements.

Their objective was to see whether daily fibre supplementation would lower blood levels of C-reactive protein or CRP and other markers of inflammation. High CRP levels are a common feature of obesity and have been linked to diabetes, the metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, and other risk factors for heart disease.

According to a report of the study in the current issue of the Annals of Family Medicine, changes in CRP levels or the other markers of inflammation were no different between the group that got psyllium fibre supplements and the no-supplement comparison group.

Drinking prevention needed in schools

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — A significant number of children are already drinking by middle school, suggesting that prevention needs to start in the elementary grades, researchers conclude in a new report.

In their study of more than 4,000 sixth-graders at Chicago schools, 17 percent of the children had used alcohol in the past year. Those students who'd started drinking were also more likely than their peers to have a range of problems, such as getting into fights, shoplifting or getting into trouble at school.

The findings, reported in the journal Health Education and Behaviour, suggest that alcohol prevention needs to start in grade school, researchers say.

And such prevention efforts should include parents, according to lead researcher Dr. Keryn Pasch, of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in Minneapolis.

One way to do that, she told Reuters Health, would be for school- based programs to include take-home assignments or other activities that involve parents.

The study included an ethnically diverse sample of sixth-graders at 61 Chicago schools; 713, or just over 17 percent, said they had drunk alcohol in the past year.

These children, Pasch and her colleagues found, were more likely than their peers to have a range of risk factors for early drinking — such as delinquent or violent behaviour, a lack of adult supervision out of school, and having friends who drank alcohol.

"I think it is important for parents to be aware that children may start drinking at an early age, and that it is important to start discussions about alcohol use early," Pasch said.

Metabolic syndrome a risk factor for depression?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — A cluster of heart disease and diabetes risk factors known as the metabolic syndrome may be a "predisposing factor for the development of depression," Finnish researchers report.

Dr. Hannu Koponen of Kuopio University in Kuopio, Finland, and colleagues followed a large group of middle-aged men and women living in central Finland for seven years.

At the start of the study in 1998, they checked for symptoms of depression using a standard instrument called the Beck Depression Inventory. They also assessed the presence of metabolic syndrome in the subjects, using established criteria.

Components of metabolic syndrome include high cholesterol and triglyceride levels, low levels of "good" HDL cholesterol, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, and excess belly fat.