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Why you should use sunscreens indoors
It may be surprising that there are dermatologic risks of UV exposure from lamps and other indoor light sources that we use daily. Is long-term daily exposure to presumably low-irradiance lights of clinical significance to photodermatoses? Recent findings suggest that skin protection must be practiced indoors to adequately protect the skin against UV rays.
Photodermatoses, such as lupus, actinic prurigo, and xeroderma pigmentosum, are only a few of the skin diseases that are triggered by UV exposure; however, chronic low-dose exposures to UV light, such as those associated with indoor lighting, may also be triggers of such conditions. Melasma, for example, can be triggered by heat or UV light. Chronic exposure to ambient light may darken the skin, necessitating daily UV protection in both indoor and outdoor settings.
A study examining light sources in the environment of a child with xeroderma pigmentosum suggested that indoor lights emit unexpected amounts of UV light as measured by a spectral radiometer. This finding illustrated that cumulative, chronic doses of indoor lighting may be of clinical significance.
Interior lighting is also implicated in worsening of melasma and other photosensitive dermatoses. Incandescent bulbs have little to no UV irradiance. However, fluorescent lighting has been shown to increase lifetime UV exposure by 3% based on the distance the lamp is from the skin. If the lamp is close – particularly desk lamps, bed lamps, and overhead lamps – the light and heat emitted can worsen photoexacerbated dermatitidis. Avoiding close contact with the light or adding acrylic or plastic diffusers to the light can help reduce exposure.
Halogen bulbs are filled with an inert gas and a halogen, such as iodine. These bulbs are usually made of quartz because quartz is more resistant to the high heat emitted by these bulbs. But the quartz, however, does not block UV radiation, which is why manufacturers add UV-blocking agents and heat-resistant glass to block the UV; however, the amount blocked is usually unknown. As with fluorescent bulbs, the distance from the bulb is essential to protect against both the UV and heat emitted. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) generate a light from a semiconductor material that converts blue light into white light with the use of phosphorus; LEDs do not emit UV rays and, therefore, are a safer light source for the skin.
In addition to the use of lamps, the light that passes through glass is easy to underestimate. Unlike UVB rays, UVA rays pass through glass and affect the skin. The percentage of UVA rays that pass through glass depends on the type of glass and the coating on the glass. There are three types of window glass: clear, reflective, and tinted. Clear glass allows 75% of UVA through,while reflective and tinted glass allow only 25%-50% of UVA rays to pass through. Low-emissivity glass (Low-E) is made to reduce heat transfer and is similar to clear glass. The most protective glass is laminated or UV-coated glass that filters out 95%-99% of all UVA rays. Unfortunately, most residential and commercial buildings do not have UVA protection. The use of blinds, shades, and tinted glass, and increasing the distance from windows and doors are the best methods of protection from chronic daily UVA exposures.
In most cars, windshield is made of laminated glass (two layers of glass with a layer of plastic in between), which blocks all UVB and approximately 50% of UVA rays. However, side and rear windows are often clear glass, which does not prevent UVA rays from penetrating through. Patients with photosensitive dermatoses and all melasma patients are encouraged to tint the side windows of their vehicles to reduce UVA exposures to 15%-30%. Tinting, however, must be in compliance with federally mandated standard of 70% minimum visible light transmittance. In my practice, daily UV protection is recommended for all patients, even within an automobile or in an office. Daily cumulative exposure can cause chronic skin damage and early signs of photoaging.
Other sources of indoor exposures include TV monitors, computers, tablets, and UV sterilization devices in the workplace. Older cathode ray tube screens emit UV radiation; however, newer liquid crystal display (LCD) or flat panel monitors most commonly on laptops, desktops, and mobile devices do not emit UV radiation. They do emit blue light – although a small fraction compared to that emitted by the sun. The amount of time spent in front of these screens and their proximity can pose a problem as blue light can increase reactive oxygen species, which is the most common contributor to premature aging. These devices also emit heat, which can exacerbate erythema ab igne and other heat-sensitive skin conditions.
The risks of indoor UV and blue light exposures are commonly overlooked. Skin protection with broad-spectrum sunscreen both inside and outside should be used daily for maximum protection. Care should also be taken to limit exposure times and increase distance of these objects from the skin and eyes.
Dr. Talakoub and Dr. Wesley are cocontributors to this column. Dr. Talakoub is in private practice in McLean, Va. Dr. Wesley practices dermatology in Beverly Hills, Calif. This month’s column is by Dr. Talakoub. Write to them at [email protected]. They had no relevant disclosures.
References
It may be surprising that there are dermatologic risks of UV exposure from lamps and other indoor light sources that we use daily. Is long-term daily exposure to presumably low-irradiance lights of clinical significance to photodermatoses? Recent findings suggest that skin protection must be practiced indoors to adequately protect the skin against UV rays.
Photodermatoses, such as lupus, actinic prurigo, and xeroderma pigmentosum, are only a few of the skin diseases that are triggered by UV exposure; however, chronic low-dose exposures to UV light, such as those associated with indoor lighting, may also be triggers of such conditions. Melasma, for example, can be triggered by heat or UV light. Chronic exposure to ambient light may darken the skin, necessitating daily UV protection in both indoor and outdoor settings.
A study examining light sources in the environment of a child with xeroderma pigmentosum suggested that indoor lights emit unexpected amounts of UV light as measured by a spectral radiometer. This finding illustrated that cumulative, chronic doses of indoor lighting may be of clinical significance.
Interior lighting is also implicated in worsening of melasma and other photosensitive dermatoses. Incandescent bulbs have little to no UV irradiance. However, fluorescent lighting has been shown to increase lifetime UV exposure by 3% based on the distance the lamp is from the skin. If the lamp is close – particularly desk lamps, bed lamps, and overhead lamps – the light and heat emitted can worsen photoexacerbated dermatitidis. Avoiding close contact with the light or adding acrylic or plastic diffusers to the light can help reduce exposure.
Halogen bulbs are filled with an inert gas and a halogen, such as iodine. These bulbs are usually made of quartz because quartz is more resistant to the high heat emitted by these bulbs. But the quartz, however, does not block UV radiation, which is why manufacturers add UV-blocking agents and heat-resistant glass to block the UV; however, the amount blocked is usually unknown. As with fluorescent bulbs, the distance from the bulb is essential to protect against both the UV and heat emitted. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) generate a light from a semiconductor material that converts blue light into white light with the use of phosphorus; LEDs do not emit UV rays and, therefore, are a safer light source for the skin.
In addition to the use of lamps, the light that passes through glass is easy to underestimate. Unlike UVB rays, UVA rays pass through glass and affect the skin. The percentage of UVA rays that pass through glass depends on the type of glass and the coating on the glass. There are three types of window glass: clear, reflective, and tinted. Clear glass allows 75% of UVA through,while reflective and tinted glass allow only 25%-50% of UVA rays to pass through. Low-emissivity glass (Low-E) is made to reduce heat transfer and is similar to clear glass. The most protective glass is laminated or UV-coated glass that filters out 95%-99% of all UVA rays. Unfortunately, most residential and commercial buildings do not have UVA protection. The use of blinds, shades, and tinted glass, and increasing the distance from windows and doors are the best methods of protection from chronic daily UVA exposures.
In most cars, windshield is made of laminated glass (two layers of glass with a layer of plastic in between), which blocks all UVB and approximately 50% of UVA rays. However, side and rear windows are often clear glass, which does not prevent UVA rays from penetrating through. Patients with photosensitive dermatoses and all melasma patients are encouraged to tint the side windows of their vehicles to reduce UVA exposures to 15%-30%. Tinting, however, must be in compliance with federally mandated standard of 70% minimum visible light transmittance. In my practice, daily UV protection is recommended for all patients, even within an automobile or in an office. Daily cumulative exposure can cause chronic skin damage and early signs of photoaging.
Other sources of indoor exposures include TV monitors, computers, tablets, and UV sterilization devices in the workplace. Older cathode ray tube screens emit UV radiation; however, newer liquid crystal display (LCD) or flat panel monitors most commonly on laptops, desktops, and mobile devices do not emit UV radiation. They do emit blue light – although a small fraction compared to that emitted by the sun. The amount of time spent in front of these screens and their proximity can pose a problem as blue light can increase reactive oxygen species, which is the most common contributor to premature aging. These devices also emit heat, which can exacerbate erythema ab igne and other heat-sensitive skin conditions.
The risks of indoor UV and blue light exposures are commonly overlooked. Skin protection with broad-spectrum sunscreen both inside and outside should be used daily for maximum protection. Care should also be taken to limit exposure times and increase distance of these objects from the skin and eyes.
Dr. Talakoub and Dr. Wesley are cocontributors to this column. Dr. Talakoub is in private practice in McLean, Va. Dr. Wesley practices dermatology in Beverly Hills, Calif. This month’s column is by Dr. Talakoub. Write to them at [email protected]. They had no relevant disclosures.
References
It may be surprising that there are dermatologic risks of UV exposure from lamps and other indoor light sources that we use daily. Is long-term daily exposure to presumably low-irradiance lights of clinical significance to photodermatoses? Recent findings suggest that skin protection must be practiced indoors to adequately protect the skin against UV rays.
Photodermatoses, such as lupus, actinic prurigo, and xeroderma pigmentosum, are only a few of the skin diseases that are triggered by UV exposure; however, chronic low-dose exposures to UV light, such as those associated with indoor lighting, may also be triggers of such conditions. Melasma, for example, can be triggered by heat or UV light. Chronic exposure to ambient light may darken the skin, necessitating daily UV protection in both indoor and outdoor settings.
A study examining light sources in the environment of a child with xeroderma pigmentosum suggested that indoor lights emit unexpected amounts of UV light as measured by a spectral radiometer. This finding illustrated that cumulative, chronic doses of indoor lighting may be of clinical significance.
Interior lighting is also implicated in worsening of melasma and other photosensitive dermatoses. Incandescent bulbs have little to no UV irradiance. However, fluorescent lighting has been shown to increase lifetime UV exposure by 3% based on the distance the lamp is from the skin. If the lamp is close – particularly desk lamps, bed lamps, and overhead lamps – the light and heat emitted can worsen photoexacerbated dermatitidis. Avoiding close contact with the light or adding acrylic or plastic diffusers to the light can help reduce exposure.
Halogen bulbs are filled with an inert gas and a halogen, such as iodine. These bulbs are usually made of quartz because quartz is more resistant to the high heat emitted by these bulbs. But the quartz, however, does not block UV radiation, which is why manufacturers add UV-blocking agents and heat-resistant glass to block the UV; however, the amount blocked is usually unknown. As with fluorescent bulbs, the distance from the bulb is essential to protect against both the UV and heat emitted. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) generate a light from a semiconductor material that converts blue light into white light with the use of phosphorus; LEDs do not emit UV rays and, therefore, are a safer light source for the skin.
In addition to the use of lamps, the light that passes through glass is easy to underestimate. Unlike UVB rays, UVA rays pass through glass and affect the skin. The percentage of UVA rays that pass through glass depends on the type of glass and the coating on the glass. There are three types of window glass: clear, reflective, and tinted. Clear glass allows 75% of UVA through,while reflective and tinted glass allow only 25%-50% of UVA rays to pass through. Low-emissivity glass (Low-E) is made to reduce heat transfer and is similar to clear glass. The most protective glass is laminated or UV-coated glass that filters out 95%-99% of all UVA rays. Unfortunately, most residential and commercial buildings do not have UVA protection. The use of blinds, shades, and tinted glass, and increasing the distance from windows and doors are the best methods of protection from chronic daily UVA exposures.
In most cars, windshield is made of laminated glass (two layers of glass with a layer of plastic in between), which blocks all UVB and approximately 50% of UVA rays. However, side and rear windows are often clear glass, which does not prevent UVA rays from penetrating through. Patients with photosensitive dermatoses and all melasma patients are encouraged to tint the side windows of their vehicles to reduce UVA exposures to 15%-30%. Tinting, however, must be in compliance with federally mandated standard of 70% minimum visible light transmittance. In my practice, daily UV protection is recommended for all patients, even within an automobile or in an office. Daily cumulative exposure can cause chronic skin damage and early signs of photoaging.
Other sources of indoor exposures include TV monitors, computers, tablets, and UV sterilization devices in the workplace. Older cathode ray tube screens emit UV radiation; however, newer liquid crystal display (LCD) or flat panel monitors most commonly on laptops, desktops, and mobile devices do not emit UV radiation. They do emit blue light – although a small fraction compared to that emitted by the sun. The amount of time spent in front of these screens and their proximity can pose a problem as blue light can increase reactive oxygen species, which is the most common contributor to premature aging. These devices also emit heat, which can exacerbate erythema ab igne and other heat-sensitive skin conditions.
The risks of indoor UV and blue light exposures are commonly overlooked. Skin protection with broad-spectrum sunscreen both inside and outside should be used daily for maximum protection. Care should also be taken to limit exposure times and increase distance of these objects from the skin and eyes.
Dr. Talakoub and Dr. Wesley are cocontributors to this column. Dr. Talakoub is in private practice in McLean, Va. Dr. Wesley practices dermatology in Beverly Hills, Calif. This month’s column is by Dr. Talakoub. Write to them at [email protected]. They had no relevant disclosures.
References
Potential pitfalls of social media
Cassandra presents to the office anxious because of social media posts her peers have made regarding current events that she feels are inflammatory.
Jenna expresses suicidal thoughts in response to comments made by peers from several schools in the area about the nature of her friendship with a boy.
Social media was developed to increase connections between people, even despite geographic distances. It has helped create communities of people with similar interests or beliefs, as well as to help reconnect us with people. It can provide educational opportunities and enhance technical skills. These are all potential benefits, but risks exist as well.
Cyberbullying and harassment
Cyberbullying is defined as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, or other electronic devices,” and can include sending denigrating messages or images.3 Studies have shown varying rates of victimization from cyberbullying, ranging from 6% to 72%, and perpetration ranging from 3% to 44%.4 Bullying in general has been associated with increased school drop-out rates, suicidal ideation, bringing weapons to school, and aggression. The sizable audience that social media can reach can amplify bullying’s impact.
Privacy concerns
Determining the appropriate amount of information to share and knowing that it is truly being shared with the person identified on the other end also can be a challenge. In addition, the digital footprint left by navigating different social media sites may have unforeseen effects on youth regarding inappropriate posts. They also may be particularly vulnerable to other predatory individuals. Other privacy concerns involve what information parents, guardians, or other family members may share online.
Addiction
While social media has the possible benefit of creating a broader social network, particularly for someone who may be anxious in more traditional settings, it also can reinforce isolation from “real-world” experiences and the sense that no one else “gets” him or her. Without knowing who is on the other end of the keyboard, tablet, or smartphone, it can be difficult to ascertain if others in the community are reinforcing maladaptive behaviors and further withdrawal.
Self esteem
Images promulgated online often are highly idealized and edited, and are meant to exhibit a specific point of view. Exposure to these images can have a negative impact on self-esteem.
Another study of preteen girls (10- to 12-year-olds) indicated that increased time spent on social media sites such as MySpace and Facebook led to greater internalization of a thin ideal, increased body image concerns, and decreased self-esteem.5 Further data suggest that youth who are in need of more mental health support may engage in increased amounts of social media use. In a Canadian study, daily use of more than 2 hours per day was associated with increased reports of emotional distress as well as suicidal ideation.6
So, given all of this information, how to address this in an appointment?
Dr. Strange is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Vermont Medical Center and University of Vermont Robert Larner College of Medicine, both in Burlington. She works with children and adolescents. She has no relevant financial disclosures.
Resources:
1. The Kaiser Family Foundation: Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds
2. The Pew Research Center: Internet & Technology, “Teens, Social Media and Technology Overview 2015.”
3. The Cyberbullying Research Center. Cyberbullying Fact Sheet 2009.
4. Cyberbullying: An Update and Synthesis of the Research, in “Cyberbullying Prevention and Response: Expert Perspectives,” (New York: Routledge, 2012, pp. 13-35).
5. J. Early Adolesc. 2014. Vol 34(5) 606-20.
6. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2015 Jul;18(7):380-5.
Cassandra presents to the office anxious because of social media posts her peers have made regarding current events that she feels are inflammatory.
Jenna expresses suicidal thoughts in response to comments made by peers from several schools in the area about the nature of her friendship with a boy.
Social media was developed to increase connections between people, even despite geographic distances. It has helped create communities of people with similar interests or beliefs, as well as to help reconnect us with people. It can provide educational opportunities and enhance technical skills. These are all potential benefits, but risks exist as well.
Cyberbullying and harassment
Cyberbullying is defined as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, or other electronic devices,” and can include sending denigrating messages or images.3 Studies have shown varying rates of victimization from cyberbullying, ranging from 6% to 72%, and perpetration ranging from 3% to 44%.4 Bullying in general has been associated with increased school drop-out rates, suicidal ideation, bringing weapons to school, and aggression. The sizable audience that social media can reach can amplify bullying’s impact.
Privacy concerns
Determining the appropriate amount of information to share and knowing that it is truly being shared with the person identified on the other end also can be a challenge. In addition, the digital footprint left by navigating different social media sites may have unforeseen effects on youth regarding inappropriate posts. They also may be particularly vulnerable to other predatory individuals. Other privacy concerns involve what information parents, guardians, or other family members may share online.
Addiction
While social media has the possible benefit of creating a broader social network, particularly for someone who may be anxious in more traditional settings, it also can reinforce isolation from “real-world” experiences and the sense that no one else “gets” him or her. Without knowing who is on the other end of the keyboard, tablet, or smartphone, it can be difficult to ascertain if others in the community are reinforcing maladaptive behaviors and further withdrawal.
Self esteem
Images promulgated online often are highly idealized and edited, and are meant to exhibit a specific point of view. Exposure to these images can have a negative impact on self-esteem.
Another study of preteen girls (10- to 12-year-olds) indicated that increased time spent on social media sites such as MySpace and Facebook led to greater internalization of a thin ideal, increased body image concerns, and decreased self-esteem.5 Further data suggest that youth who are in need of more mental health support may engage in increased amounts of social media use. In a Canadian study, daily use of more than 2 hours per day was associated with increased reports of emotional distress as well as suicidal ideation.6
So, given all of this information, how to address this in an appointment?
Dr. Strange is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Vermont Medical Center and University of Vermont Robert Larner College of Medicine, both in Burlington. She works with children and adolescents. She has no relevant financial disclosures.
Resources:
1. The Kaiser Family Foundation: Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds
2. The Pew Research Center: Internet & Technology, “Teens, Social Media and Technology Overview 2015.”
3. The Cyberbullying Research Center. Cyberbullying Fact Sheet 2009.
4. Cyberbullying: An Update and Synthesis of the Research, in “Cyberbullying Prevention and Response: Expert Perspectives,” (New York: Routledge, 2012, pp. 13-35).
5. J. Early Adolesc. 2014. Vol 34(5) 606-20.
6. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2015 Jul;18(7):380-5.
Cassandra presents to the office anxious because of social media posts her peers have made regarding current events that she feels are inflammatory.
Jenna expresses suicidal thoughts in response to comments made by peers from several schools in the area about the nature of her friendship with a boy.
Social media was developed to increase connections between people, even despite geographic distances. It has helped create communities of people with similar interests or beliefs, as well as to help reconnect us with people. It can provide educational opportunities and enhance technical skills. These are all potential benefits, but risks exist as well.
Cyberbullying and harassment
Cyberbullying is defined as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, or other electronic devices,” and can include sending denigrating messages or images.3 Studies have shown varying rates of victimization from cyberbullying, ranging from 6% to 72%, and perpetration ranging from 3% to 44%.4 Bullying in general has been associated with increased school drop-out rates, suicidal ideation, bringing weapons to school, and aggression. The sizable audience that social media can reach can amplify bullying’s impact.
Privacy concerns
Determining the appropriate amount of information to share and knowing that it is truly being shared with the person identified on the other end also can be a challenge. In addition, the digital footprint left by navigating different social media sites may have unforeseen effects on youth regarding inappropriate posts. They also may be particularly vulnerable to other predatory individuals. Other privacy concerns involve what information parents, guardians, or other family members may share online.
Addiction
While social media has the possible benefit of creating a broader social network, particularly for someone who may be anxious in more traditional settings, it also can reinforce isolation from “real-world” experiences and the sense that no one else “gets” him or her. Without knowing who is on the other end of the keyboard, tablet, or smartphone, it can be difficult to ascertain if others in the community are reinforcing maladaptive behaviors and further withdrawal.
Self esteem
Images promulgated online often are highly idealized and edited, and are meant to exhibit a specific point of view. Exposure to these images can have a negative impact on self-esteem.
Another study of preteen girls (10- to 12-year-olds) indicated that increased time spent on social media sites such as MySpace and Facebook led to greater internalization of a thin ideal, increased body image concerns, and decreased self-esteem.5 Further data suggest that youth who are in need of more mental health support may engage in increased amounts of social media use. In a Canadian study, daily use of more than 2 hours per day was associated with increased reports of emotional distress as well as suicidal ideation.6
So, given all of this information, how to address this in an appointment?
Dr. Strange is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Vermont Medical Center and University of Vermont Robert Larner College of Medicine, both in Burlington. She works with children and adolescents. She has no relevant financial disclosures.
Resources:
1. The Kaiser Family Foundation: Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds
2. The Pew Research Center: Internet & Technology, “Teens, Social Media and Technology Overview 2015.”
3. The Cyberbullying Research Center. Cyberbullying Fact Sheet 2009.
4. Cyberbullying: An Update and Synthesis of the Research, in “Cyberbullying Prevention and Response: Expert Perspectives,” (New York: Routledge, 2012, pp. 13-35).
5. J. Early Adolesc. 2014. Vol 34(5) 606-20.
6. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2015 Jul;18(7):380-5.
Mindfulness and child health
If you are struggling to figure out how you, as an individual pediatrician, can make a significant impact on the most common current issues in child health of anxiety, depression, sleep problems, stress, and even adverse childhood experiences, you are not alone. Many of the problems we see in the office appear to stem so much from the culture in which we live that the medical interventions we have to offer seem paltry. Yet we strive to identify and attempt to ameliorate the child’s and family’s distress.
Real physical danger aside, a lot of personal distress is due to negative thoughts about one’s past or fears for one’s future. These thoughts are very important in restraining us from repeating mistakes and preparing us for action to prevent future harm. But the thoughts themselves can be stressful; they may paralyze us with anxiety, take away pleasure, interrupt our sleep, stimulate physiologic stress responses, and have adverse impacts on health. All these effects can occur without actually changing the course of events! How can we advise our patients and their parents to work to balance the protective function of our thoughts against the cost to our well-being?
One promising method you can confidently recommend to both children and their parents to manage stressful thinking is to learn and practice mindfulness. Mindfulness refers to a state of nonreactivity, awareness, focus, attention, and nonjudgment. Noticing thoughts and feelings passing through us with a neutral mind, as if we were watching a movie, rather than taking them personally, is the goal. Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, learned from Buddhists, then developed and disseminated a formal program to teach this skill called mindfulness-based stress reduction; it has yielded significant benefits to the emotions and health of adult participants. While everyone can be mindful at times, the ability to enter this state at will and maintain it for a few minutes can be learned, even by preschool children.
How am I going to refer my patients to mindfulness programs, I can hear you saying, when I can’t even get them to standard therapies? Mindfulness in a less-structured format is often part of yoga or Tai Chi, meditation, art therapy, group therapy, or even religious services. Fortunately, parents and educators also can teach children mindfulness. But the first way you can start making this life skill available to your patients is by recommending it to their parents (“The Family ADHD Solution” by Mark Bertin [New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011]).
You know that child emotional or behavior problems can cause adult stress. But adult stress also can cause or exacerbate a child’s emotional or behavior problems. Adult caregivers modeling meltdowns are shaping the minds of their children. Studies of teaching mindfulness to parents of children with developmental disabilities, autism, and ADHD, without touching the underlying disorder, show significant reductions in both adult stress and child behavior problems. Parents who can suspend emotion, take some deep breaths, and be thoughtful about the response they want to make instead of reacting impulsively act more reasonably, appear warmer and more compassionate to their children, and are often rewarded with better behavior. Such parents may feel better about themselves and their parenting, may experience less stress, and may themselves sleep better at night!
For children, having an adult simply declare moments to stop, take deep breaths, and notice the sounds, sights, feelings, and smells around them is a good start. Making a routine of taking an “awareness walk” around the block can be another lesson. Eating a food, such as a strawberry, mindfully – observing and savoring every bite – is another natural opportunity to practice increased awareness. One of my favorite tools, having a child shake a glitter globe (like a snow globe that can be made at home) and silently wait for the chaos to subside, “just like their feelings inside,” is soothing and a great metaphor! Abdominal breathing, part of many relaxation exercises, may be hard for young children to master. A parent might try having the child lie down with a stuffed animal on his or her belly and focus on watching it rise and fall while breathing as a way to learn this. For older children, keeping a “gratitude journal” helps focus on the positive, and also has some proven efficacy in relieving depression. Using the “1 Second Everyday” app to video a special moment daily may have a similar effect on sharpening awareness.
Dr. Howard is assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and creator of CHADIS (www.CHADIS.com). She had no other relevant disclosures. Dr. Howard’s contribution to this publication was as a paid expert to Frontline Medical News.
If you are struggling to figure out how you, as an individual pediatrician, can make a significant impact on the most common current issues in child health of anxiety, depression, sleep problems, stress, and even adverse childhood experiences, you are not alone. Many of the problems we see in the office appear to stem so much from the culture in which we live that the medical interventions we have to offer seem paltry. Yet we strive to identify and attempt to ameliorate the child’s and family’s distress.
Real physical danger aside, a lot of personal distress is due to negative thoughts about one’s past or fears for one’s future. These thoughts are very important in restraining us from repeating mistakes and preparing us for action to prevent future harm. But the thoughts themselves can be stressful; they may paralyze us with anxiety, take away pleasure, interrupt our sleep, stimulate physiologic stress responses, and have adverse impacts on health. All these effects can occur without actually changing the course of events! How can we advise our patients and their parents to work to balance the protective function of our thoughts against the cost to our well-being?
One promising method you can confidently recommend to both children and their parents to manage stressful thinking is to learn and practice mindfulness. Mindfulness refers to a state of nonreactivity, awareness, focus, attention, and nonjudgment. Noticing thoughts and feelings passing through us with a neutral mind, as if we were watching a movie, rather than taking them personally, is the goal. Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, learned from Buddhists, then developed and disseminated a formal program to teach this skill called mindfulness-based stress reduction; it has yielded significant benefits to the emotions and health of adult participants. While everyone can be mindful at times, the ability to enter this state at will and maintain it for a few minutes can be learned, even by preschool children.
How am I going to refer my patients to mindfulness programs, I can hear you saying, when I can’t even get them to standard therapies? Mindfulness in a less-structured format is often part of yoga or Tai Chi, meditation, art therapy, group therapy, or even religious services. Fortunately, parents and educators also can teach children mindfulness. But the first way you can start making this life skill available to your patients is by recommending it to their parents (“The Family ADHD Solution” by Mark Bertin [New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011]).
You know that child emotional or behavior problems can cause adult stress. But adult stress also can cause or exacerbate a child’s emotional or behavior problems. Adult caregivers modeling meltdowns are shaping the minds of their children. Studies of teaching mindfulness to parents of children with developmental disabilities, autism, and ADHD, without touching the underlying disorder, show significant reductions in both adult stress and child behavior problems. Parents who can suspend emotion, take some deep breaths, and be thoughtful about the response they want to make instead of reacting impulsively act more reasonably, appear warmer and more compassionate to their children, and are often rewarded with better behavior. Such parents may feel better about themselves and their parenting, may experience less stress, and may themselves sleep better at night!
For children, having an adult simply declare moments to stop, take deep breaths, and notice the sounds, sights, feelings, and smells around them is a good start. Making a routine of taking an “awareness walk” around the block can be another lesson. Eating a food, such as a strawberry, mindfully – observing and savoring every bite – is another natural opportunity to practice increased awareness. One of my favorite tools, having a child shake a glitter globe (like a snow globe that can be made at home) and silently wait for the chaos to subside, “just like their feelings inside,” is soothing and a great metaphor! Abdominal breathing, part of many relaxation exercises, may be hard for young children to master. A parent might try having the child lie down with a stuffed animal on his or her belly and focus on watching it rise and fall while breathing as a way to learn this. For older children, keeping a “gratitude journal” helps focus on the positive, and also has some proven efficacy in relieving depression. Using the “1 Second Everyday” app to video a special moment daily may have a similar effect on sharpening awareness.
Dr. Howard is assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and creator of CHADIS (www.CHADIS.com). She had no other relevant disclosures. Dr. Howard’s contribution to this publication was as a paid expert to Frontline Medical News.
If you are struggling to figure out how you, as an individual pediatrician, can make a significant impact on the most common current issues in child health of anxiety, depression, sleep problems, stress, and even adverse childhood experiences, you are not alone. Many of the problems we see in the office appear to stem so much from the culture in which we live that the medical interventions we have to offer seem paltry. Yet we strive to identify and attempt to ameliorate the child’s and family’s distress.
Real physical danger aside, a lot of personal distress is due to negative thoughts about one’s past or fears for one’s future. These thoughts are very important in restraining us from repeating mistakes and preparing us for action to prevent future harm. But the thoughts themselves can be stressful; they may paralyze us with anxiety, take away pleasure, interrupt our sleep, stimulate physiologic stress responses, and have adverse impacts on health. All these effects can occur without actually changing the course of events! How can we advise our patients and their parents to work to balance the protective function of our thoughts against the cost to our well-being?
One promising method you can confidently recommend to both children and their parents to manage stressful thinking is to learn and practice mindfulness. Mindfulness refers to a state of nonreactivity, awareness, focus, attention, and nonjudgment. Noticing thoughts and feelings passing through us with a neutral mind, as if we were watching a movie, rather than taking them personally, is the goal. Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, learned from Buddhists, then developed and disseminated a formal program to teach this skill called mindfulness-based stress reduction; it has yielded significant benefits to the emotions and health of adult participants. While everyone can be mindful at times, the ability to enter this state at will and maintain it for a few minutes can be learned, even by preschool children.
How am I going to refer my patients to mindfulness programs, I can hear you saying, when I can’t even get them to standard therapies? Mindfulness in a less-structured format is often part of yoga or Tai Chi, meditation, art therapy, group therapy, or even religious services. Fortunately, parents and educators also can teach children mindfulness. But the first way you can start making this life skill available to your patients is by recommending it to their parents (“The Family ADHD Solution” by Mark Bertin [New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011]).
You know that child emotional or behavior problems can cause adult stress. But adult stress also can cause or exacerbate a child’s emotional or behavior problems. Adult caregivers modeling meltdowns are shaping the minds of their children. Studies of teaching mindfulness to parents of children with developmental disabilities, autism, and ADHD, without touching the underlying disorder, show significant reductions in both adult stress and child behavior problems. Parents who can suspend emotion, take some deep breaths, and be thoughtful about the response they want to make instead of reacting impulsively act more reasonably, appear warmer and more compassionate to their children, and are often rewarded with better behavior. Such parents may feel better about themselves and their parenting, may experience less stress, and may themselves sleep better at night!
For children, having an adult simply declare moments to stop, take deep breaths, and notice the sounds, sights, feelings, and smells around them is a good start. Making a routine of taking an “awareness walk” around the block can be another lesson. Eating a food, such as a strawberry, mindfully – observing and savoring every bite – is another natural opportunity to practice increased awareness. One of my favorite tools, having a child shake a glitter globe (like a snow globe that can be made at home) and silently wait for the chaos to subside, “just like their feelings inside,” is soothing and a great metaphor! Abdominal breathing, part of many relaxation exercises, may be hard for young children to master. A parent might try having the child lie down with a stuffed animal on his or her belly and focus on watching it rise and fall while breathing as a way to learn this. For older children, keeping a “gratitude journal” helps focus on the positive, and also has some proven efficacy in relieving depression. Using the “1 Second Everyday” app to video a special moment daily may have a similar effect on sharpening awareness.
Dr. Howard is assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and creator of CHADIS (www.CHADIS.com). She had no other relevant disclosures. Dr. Howard’s contribution to this publication was as a paid expert to Frontline Medical News.
AMA’s stance on choline, prenatal vitamins could bring ‘staggering’ results
For quite some time now, I’ve been urging my colleagues to follow the science on the powerful impact of choline on the brain.
In May 2017, based on studies using genetically altered mice that show the developmental changes of Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease at 6 months, I raised the question of whether prenatal choline could lead to the prevention of Alzheimer’s.
Thanks to the leadership of Niva Lubin-Johnson, MD, now president-elect of the National Medical Association, while a member and immediate past chair of the American Medical Association’s minority affairs section governing council*, the AMA ’s delegates passed a resolution to support an increase in choline in prenatal vitamins.
If the prenatal vitamin companies take the AMA’s resolution to heart and put more choline in their prenatal vitamins or if physicians in the United States pay attention to the AMA’s action and recommend pregnant women ensure they get adequate choline in their diets, the benefit to Americans’ public health could be staggering. Currently, it is known that choline deficiency – usually brought about by fetal alcohol exposure – is a public health problem, and choline deficiency is the leading preventable cause of intellectual disability. Public health efforts aimed at preventing intellectual disabilities from fetal alcohol exposure are designed to warn women about the risks of drinking during pregnancy; while this effort is commendable, it does not solve a very common problem – namely, women’s engaging in social drinking before they realize they are pregnant. (Psychiatric Serv. 2015 66[5]:539-42).
The late Julius B. Richmond, MD, former director of the Institute for Juvenile Research, surgeon general under former President Jimmy Carter, and one of the founders of Head Start under former President Lyndon B. Johnson, used to say that, in order to institutionalize a public policy, you need a solid scientific basis for the policy, a mechanism to actualize the policy, and the “political will” to do so. The AMA’s recommendation has the Institute of Medicine’s science behind it, so putting choline in prenatal vitamins or having physicians recommend that pregnant women get adequate doses of choline should be pretty easy to actualize. The political will to do this extremely important, biotechnical preventive intervention should be a no-brainer.
Should this AMA recommendation gain the traction it deserves, the American people might see a substantial decrease in the prevalence of premature and low-birth-weight infants, intellectual disability, ADHD, speech and language difficulties, epilepsy, heart defects, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, school failure, juvenile delinquency, violence, and suicide – all of which seem to be tied to choline deficiency.
*This story was updated August 17, 2017.
For quite some time now, I’ve been urging my colleagues to follow the science on the powerful impact of choline on the brain.
In May 2017, based on studies using genetically altered mice that show the developmental changes of Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease at 6 months, I raised the question of whether prenatal choline could lead to the prevention of Alzheimer’s.
Thanks to the leadership of Niva Lubin-Johnson, MD, now president-elect of the National Medical Association, while a member and immediate past chair of the American Medical Association’s minority affairs section governing council*, the AMA ’s delegates passed a resolution to support an increase in choline in prenatal vitamins.
If the prenatal vitamin companies take the AMA’s resolution to heart and put more choline in their prenatal vitamins or if physicians in the United States pay attention to the AMA’s action and recommend pregnant women ensure they get adequate choline in their diets, the benefit to Americans’ public health could be staggering. Currently, it is known that choline deficiency – usually brought about by fetal alcohol exposure – is a public health problem, and choline deficiency is the leading preventable cause of intellectual disability. Public health efforts aimed at preventing intellectual disabilities from fetal alcohol exposure are designed to warn women about the risks of drinking during pregnancy; while this effort is commendable, it does not solve a very common problem – namely, women’s engaging in social drinking before they realize they are pregnant. (Psychiatric Serv. 2015 66[5]:539-42).
The late Julius B. Richmond, MD, former director of the Institute for Juvenile Research, surgeon general under former President Jimmy Carter, and one of the founders of Head Start under former President Lyndon B. Johnson, used to say that, in order to institutionalize a public policy, you need a solid scientific basis for the policy, a mechanism to actualize the policy, and the “political will” to do so. The AMA’s recommendation has the Institute of Medicine’s science behind it, so putting choline in prenatal vitamins or having physicians recommend that pregnant women get adequate doses of choline should be pretty easy to actualize. The political will to do this extremely important, biotechnical preventive intervention should be a no-brainer.
Should this AMA recommendation gain the traction it deserves, the American people might see a substantial decrease in the prevalence of premature and low-birth-weight infants, intellectual disability, ADHD, speech and language difficulties, epilepsy, heart defects, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, school failure, juvenile delinquency, violence, and suicide – all of which seem to be tied to choline deficiency.
*This story was updated August 17, 2017.
For quite some time now, I’ve been urging my colleagues to follow the science on the powerful impact of choline on the brain.
In May 2017, based on studies using genetically altered mice that show the developmental changes of Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease at 6 months, I raised the question of whether prenatal choline could lead to the prevention of Alzheimer’s.
Thanks to the leadership of Niva Lubin-Johnson, MD, now president-elect of the National Medical Association, while a member and immediate past chair of the American Medical Association’s minority affairs section governing council*, the AMA ’s delegates passed a resolution to support an increase in choline in prenatal vitamins.
If the prenatal vitamin companies take the AMA’s resolution to heart and put more choline in their prenatal vitamins or if physicians in the United States pay attention to the AMA’s action and recommend pregnant women ensure they get adequate choline in their diets, the benefit to Americans’ public health could be staggering. Currently, it is known that choline deficiency – usually brought about by fetal alcohol exposure – is a public health problem, and choline deficiency is the leading preventable cause of intellectual disability. Public health efforts aimed at preventing intellectual disabilities from fetal alcohol exposure are designed to warn women about the risks of drinking during pregnancy; while this effort is commendable, it does not solve a very common problem – namely, women’s engaging in social drinking before they realize they are pregnant. (Psychiatric Serv. 2015 66[5]:539-42).
The late Julius B. Richmond, MD, former director of the Institute for Juvenile Research, surgeon general under former President Jimmy Carter, and one of the founders of Head Start under former President Lyndon B. Johnson, used to say that, in order to institutionalize a public policy, you need a solid scientific basis for the policy, a mechanism to actualize the policy, and the “political will” to do so. The AMA’s recommendation has the Institute of Medicine’s science behind it, so putting choline in prenatal vitamins or having physicians recommend that pregnant women get adequate doses of choline should be pretty easy to actualize. The political will to do this extremely important, biotechnical preventive intervention should be a no-brainer.
Should this AMA recommendation gain the traction it deserves, the American people might see a substantial decrease in the prevalence of premature and low-birth-weight infants, intellectual disability, ADHD, speech and language difficulties, epilepsy, heart defects, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, school failure, juvenile delinquency, violence, and suicide – all of which seem to be tied to choline deficiency.
*This story was updated August 17, 2017.
How many strikes?
(Larissa MacFarquar, Aug. 7 & 14, 2017). It is a very complex question, and one for which there has never been an easy answer, certainly not an answer that can be applied universally. However, my reflex response was “sooner rather than later!”
What prompted my hasty from-the-hip answer is 40-plus years of watching the legal system grind along at a pace that too often fails to take into account the emotional needs of a child’s developing personality. While lawyers file for extensions and wait for slots in dockets bloated with less time-sensitive cases, children float in limbo waiting to hear where their home will be and who will constitute their family.
Even if he is lucky enough to be housed with a single foster home, the odds are that his stays there will be punctuated with returns to his parent as the parent is given one more chance to beat back the demons that have stood in the way of at least an adequate, if not a model, parenthood. The New Yorker article chronicles one such odyssey that spans a mother’s four pregnancies with several fathers.
In the crudest terms, here is the question: “How many strikes does one get before one loses his or her parental rights?” It is a bit easier to make the call when there have been incidents in which a parent’s action or inaction has put the child’s physical health in jeopardy. However, the social workers, physicians, and law enforcement officials who must shoulder the burden of these decisions involving the abusive parent often find themselves in no-win situations. Giving the parent who is suspected of physical abuse having been “just a little heavy handed” one more chance could result in death or life-long impairment.
I suspect the rationale for giving the parent another chance is based on the belief that the biologic family should always be the preferred option; an assumption that can be called into question. While I don’t think these decisions should be made with the strict application of an algorithm, I believe there is more room for evidence-based decision-making. That evidence may not be currently available, but I think we should be asking questions to get that information. For example, for an individual with a specific substance addiction or mental illness with a certain diagnosis, what are the chances of a remedy that will allow that individual to become a functional parent? And how long will it take?
Information like this may be helpful for those folks with the difficult job of deciding when a parent should lose his parental rights in a time course that takes into account the emotional needs of his children.
Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Email him at [email protected].
(Larissa MacFarquar, Aug. 7 & 14, 2017). It is a very complex question, and one for which there has never been an easy answer, certainly not an answer that can be applied universally. However, my reflex response was “sooner rather than later!”
What prompted my hasty from-the-hip answer is 40-plus years of watching the legal system grind along at a pace that too often fails to take into account the emotional needs of a child’s developing personality. While lawyers file for extensions and wait for slots in dockets bloated with less time-sensitive cases, children float in limbo waiting to hear where their home will be and who will constitute their family.
Even if he is lucky enough to be housed with a single foster home, the odds are that his stays there will be punctuated with returns to his parent as the parent is given one more chance to beat back the demons that have stood in the way of at least an adequate, if not a model, parenthood. The New Yorker article chronicles one such odyssey that spans a mother’s four pregnancies with several fathers.
In the crudest terms, here is the question: “How many strikes does one get before one loses his or her parental rights?” It is a bit easier to make the call when there have been incidents in which a parent’s action or inaction has put the child’s physical health in jeopardy. However, the social workers, physicians, and law enforcement officials who must shoulder the burden of these decisions involving the abusive parent often find themselves in no-win situations. Giving the parent who is suspected of physical abuse having been “just a little heavy handed” one more chance could result in death or life-long impairment.
I suspect the rationale for giving the parent another chance is based on the belief that the biologic family should always be the preferred option; an assumption that can be called into question. While I don’t think these decisions should be made with the strict application of an algorithm, I believe there is more room for evidence-based decision-making. That evidence may not be currently available, but I think we should be asking questions to get that information. For example, for an individual with a specific substance addiction or mental illness with a certain diagnosis, what are the chances of a remedy that will allow that individual to become a functional parent? And how long will it take?
Information like this may be helpful for those folks with the difficult job of deciding when a parent should lose his parental rights in a time course that takes into account the emotional needs of his children.
Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Email him at [email protected].
(Larissa MacFarquar, Aug. 7 & 14, 2017). It is a very complex question, and one for which there has never been an easy answer, certainly not an answer that can be applied universally. However, my reflex response was “sooner rather than later!”
What prompted my hasty from-the-hip answer is 40-plus years of watching the legal system grind along at a pace that too often fails to take into account the emotional needs of a child’s developing personality. While lawyers file for extensions and wait for slots in dockets bloated with less time-sensitive cases, children float in limbo waiting to hear where their home will be and who will constitute their family.
Even if he is lucky enough to be housed with a single foster home, the odds are that his stays there will be punctuated with returns to his parent as the parent is given one more chance to beat back the demons that have stood in the way of at least an adequate, if not a model, parenthood. The New Yorker article chronicles one such odyssey that spans a mother’s four pregnancies with several fathers.
In the crudest terms, here is the question: “How many strikes does one get before one loses his or her parental rights?” It is a bit easier to make the call when there have been incidents in which a parent’s action or inaction has put the child’s physical health in jeopardy. However, the social workers, physicians, and law enforcement officials who must shoulder the burden of these decisions involving the abusive parent often find themselves in no-win situations. Giving the parent who is suspected of physical abuse having been “just a little heavy handed” one more chance could result in death or life-long impairment.
I suspect the rationale for giving the parent another chance is based on the belief that the biologic family should always be the preferred option; an assumption that can be called into question. While I don’t think these decisions should be made with the strict application of an algorithm, I believe there is more room for evidence-based decision-making. That evidence may not be currently available, but I think we should be asking questions to get that information. For example, for an individual with a specific substance addiction or mental illness with a certain diagnosis, what are the chances of a remedy that will allow that individual to become a functional parent? And how long will it take?
Information like this may be helpful for those folks with the difficult job of deciding when a parent should lose his parental rights in a time course that takes into account the emotional needs of his children.
Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Email him at [email protected].
Beating your wandering attention
Like many adults, I suspect that I may have been living under the cloud of an undiagnosed case of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). What else could explain why my mind wanders during the second hole of my wife’s narrative of her morning golf outing with her friends? Why have I never been in a class or lecture in which after 20 minutes I began wishing I were somewhere else? In my student days, I felt compelled to leave my studies and go to the refrigerator every 15 minutes – even though I wasn’t hungry. Sounds like ADHD to me.
But I know what you are thinking. This guy graduated from medical school, and has been married to the same woman for nearly 50 years. He has no criminal record and has held the same job for more than 40 years. I will admit that my life trajectory is atypical for someone even with a mild case of adult ADHD.
Actually, I don’t really believe that I have an undiagnosed case of ADHD. But I do feel that my attention span is at the short end of the normal spectrum. And I think that by good fortune I stumbled on several strategies that helped me thrive in an academic environment despite my relative attention deficit.
Most noteworthy among those strategies was my habit of listening to heavy metal music with a throbbing beat while I was studying. At my recent college reunion, former classmates whom I hadn’t seen in 50 years reminded me of how often I drove them to quieter study oases with the driving rhythms of the Rolling Stones’ misogynistic anthem “Under My Thumb.”My wife still recalls her amazement the first (and last) time she offered to keep me company while I studied for a pathophysiology exam. She found me hunched over my notes spread out on a coffee table, my knees bouncing to the beat of Joe Cocker crowing the Beatles’ classic “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” (still one of my all-time favorites). Earbuds hadn’t been invented, and I considered earphones the size of chili bowls too dorky.
I always have assumed that my study habits were just a little weird. But recently I discovered an article describing the work of Alexander Pantelyat, MD, assistant professor of neurology and cofounder of the Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine (“Does Listening to Music Improve Your Focus?” by Heidi Mitchell, Wall Street Journal, July 26, 2017). Dr. Pantelyat notes that the early enthusiasm for playing Mozart to newborns has faded with the understanding that any improvement in learning skills was short-lived. However, he sees some evidence that hearing music of a genre you enjoy may help you focus better than listening to music that you don’t like. He says, “If you enjoy heavy metal, you might be more focused when you listen to it.”
As Dr. Pantelyat cautions, the response to music is highly individual. I generally have not recommended my peculiar study habits to my patients. However, my experience has left me more open-minded when trying to help young people struggling to find a study strategy that works. You may not share my affinity for the Rolling Stones and Joe Cocker, but you have to admit you would rather have your patients listen to their music than take drugs they may not need.
Like many adults, I suspect that I may have been living under the cloud of an undiagnosed case of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). What else could explain why my mind wanders during the second hole of my wife’s narrative of her morning golf outing with her friends? Why have I never been in a class or lecture in which after 20 minutes I began wishing I were somewhere else? In my student days, I felt compelled to leave my studies and go to the refrigerator every 15 minutes – even though I wasn’t hungry. Sounds like ADHD to me.
But I know what you are thinking. This guy graduated from medical school, and has been married to the same woman for nearly 50 years. He has no criminal record and has held the same job for more than 40 years. I will admit that my life trajectory is atypical for someone even with a mild case of adult ADHD.
Actually, I don’t really believe that I have an undiagnosed case of ADHD. But I do feel that my attention span is at the short end of the normal spectrum. And I think that by good fortune I stumbled on several strategies that helped me thrive in an academic environment despite my relative attention deficit.
Most noteworthy among those strategies was my habit of listening to heavy metal music with a throbbing beat while I was studying. At my recent college reunion, former classmates whom I hadn’t seen in 50 years reminded me of how often I drove them to quieter study oases with the driving rhythms of the Rolling Stones’ misogynistic anthem “Under My Thumb.”My wife still recalls her amazement the first (and last) time she offered to keep me company while I studied for a pathophysiology exam. She found me hunched over my notes spread out on a coffee table, my knees bouncing to the beat of Joe Cocker crowing the Beatles’ classic “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” (still one of my all-time favorites). Earbuds hadn’t been invented, and I considered earphones the size of chili bowls too dorky.
I always have assumed that my study habits were just a little weird. But recently I discovered an article describing the work of Alexander Pantelyat, MD, assistant professor of neurology and cofounder of the Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine (“Does Listening to Music Improve Your Focus?” by Heidi Mitchell, Wall Street Journal, July 26, 2017). Dr. Pantelyat notes that the early enthusiasm for playing Mozart to newborns has faded with the understanding that any improvement in learning skills was short-lived. However, he sees some evidence that hearing music of a genre you enjoy may help you focus better than listening to music that you don’t like. He says, “If you enjoy heavy metal, you might be more focused when you listen to it.”
As Dr. Pantelyat cautions, the response to music is highly individual. I generally have not recommended my peculiar study habits to my patients. However, my experience has left me more open-minded when trying to help young people struggling to find a study strategy that works. You may not share my affinity for the Rolling Stones and Joe Cocker, but you have to admit you would rather have your patients listen to their music than take drugs they may not need.
Like many adults, I suspect that I may have been living under the cloud of an undiagnosed case of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). What else could explain why my mind wanders during the second hole of my wife’s narrative of her morning golf outing with her friends? Why have I never been in a class or lecture in which after 20 minutes I began wishing I were somewhere else? In my student days, I felt compelled to leave my studies and go to the refrigerator every 15 minutes – even though I wasn’t hungry. Sounds like ADHD to me.
But I know what you are thinking. This guy graduated from medical school, and has been married to the same woman for nearly 50 years. He has no criminal record and has held the same job for more than 40 years. I will admit that my life trajectory is atypical for someone even with a mild case of adult ADHD.
Actually, I don’t really believe that I have an undiagnosed case of ADHD. But I do feel that my attention span is at the short end of the normal spectrum. And I think that by good fortune I stumbled on several strategies that helped me thrive in an academic environment despite my relative attention deficit.
Most noteworthy among those strategies was my habit of listening to heavy metal music with a throbbing beat while I was studying. At my recent college reunion, former classmates whom I hadn’t seen in 50 years reminded me of how often I drove them to quieter study oases with the driving rhythms of the Rolling Stones’ misogynistic anthem “Under My Thumb.”My wife still recalls her amazement the first (and last) time she offered to keep me company while I studied for a pathophysiology exam. She found me hunched over my notes spread out on a coffee table, my knees bouncing to the beat of Joe Cocker crowing the Beatles’ classic “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” (still one of my all-time favorites). Earbuds hadn’t been invented, and I considered earphones the size of chili bowls too dorky.
I always have assumed that my study habits were just a little weird. But recently I discovered an article describing the work of Alexander Pantelyat, MD, assistant professor of neurology and cofounder of the Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine (“Does Listening to Music Improve Your Focus?” by Heidi Mitchell, Wall Street Journal, July 26, 2017). Dr. Pantelyat notes that the early enthusiasm for playing Mozart to newborns has faded with the understanding that any improvement in learning skills was short-lived. However, he sees some evidence that hearing music of a genre you enjoy may help you focus better than listening to music that you don’t like. He says, “If you enjoy heavy metal, you might be more focused when you listen to it.”
As Dr. Pantelyat cautions, the response to music is highly individual. I generally have not recommended my peculiar study habits to my patients. However, my experience has left me more open-minded when trying to help young people struggling to find a study strategy that works. You may not share my affinity for the Rolling Stones and Joe Cocker, but you have to admit you would rather have your patients listen to their music than take drugs they may not need.
Paying it forward
I was 14 when my grandmother fell and broke her hip. She went to the emergency department by ambulance from the restaurant we were at, and Dad took me to the hospital with him. He was an only child, and not a medical person. He was very worried.
There, Grandma looked older and more frail than usual. She and my dad were both anxious when told she’d need surgery.
Then the orthopedic surgeon came in. Tall and confident, he was initially quite imposing. But he was polite and had a great bedside manner. He calmed my dad and grandmother down, explained what needed to be done, and was reassuring. After surgery, he came to the waiting room to let us know things had gone well. I remember how impressed Dad and I both were.
Now, here was that surgeon again, on the other side of my desk. Arthritis had taken away some of his height. But he still carried himself with a proud dignity.
His family had brought him to me for worsening memory problems. He thought he was still in practice, although he had retired years ago. He didn’t remember his address, what city we were in, or what a clock looked like.
You hear families talk about how much Alzheimer’s disease takes away from a loved one, but you rarely have the opportunity in a practice to see for yourself. But the impression he’d made on me over 35 years ago was still strong, and I remembered every detail in comparison to the person across from me today.
In his field, he fixed things. With screws, rods, and casts he could restore broken bones, returning them to strength and use – like he had with my grandmother.
Sadly, I can’t return the favor now. I can only offer his family comfort, and answer questions, the way he once did with mine.
I started donepezil and gave them the most optimistic talk I have for these cases. But I know we’re still far away from fixing broken brains.
After he left, I found myself looking in the mirror, thinking of how I saw him then, wondering if his family saw me the same way now, and realizing that someday my children and I may be in the same situation.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.
I was 14 when my grandmother fell and broke her hip. She went to the emergency department by ambulance from the restaurant we were at, and Dad took me to the hospital with him. He was an only child, and not a medical person. He was very worried.
There, Grandma looked older and more frail than usual. She and my dad were both anxious when told she’d need surgery.
Then the orthopedic surgeon came in. Tall and confident, he was initially quite imposing. But he was polite and had a great bedside manner. He calmed my dad and grandmother down, explained what needed to be done, and was reassuring. After surgery, he came to the waiting room to let us know things had gone well. I remember how impressed Dad and I both were.
Now, here was that surgeon again, on the other side of my desk. Arthritis had taken away some of his height. But he still carried himself with a proud dignity.
His family had brought him to me for worsening memory problems. He thought he was still in practice, although he had retired years ago. He didn’t remember his address, what city we were in, or what a clock looked like.
You hear families talk about how much Alzheimer’s disease takes away from a loved one, but you rarely have the opportunity in a practice to see for yourself. But the impression he’d made on me over 35 years ago was still strong, and I remembered every detail in comparison to the person across from me today.
In his field, he fixed things. With screws, rods, and casts he could restore broken bones, returning them to strength and use – like he had with my grandmother.
Sadly, I can’t return the favor now. I can only offer his family comfort, and answer questions, the way he once did with mine.
I started donepezil and gave them the most optimistic talk I have for these cases. But I know we’re still far away from fixing broken brains.
After he left, I found myself looking in the mirror, thinking of how I saw him then, wondering if his family saw me the same way now, and realizing that someday my children and I may be in the same situation.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.
I was 14 when my grandmother fell and broke her hip. She went to the emergency department by ambulance from the restaurant we were at, and Dad took me to the hospital with him. He was an only child, and not a medical person. He was very worried.
There, Grandma looked older and more frail than usual. She and my dad were both anxious when told she’d need surgery.
Then the orthopedic surgeon came in. Tall and confident, he was initially quite imposing. But he was polite and had a great bedside manner. He calmed my dad and grandmother down, explained what needed to be done, and was reassuring. After surgery, he came to the waiting room to let us know things had gone well. I remember how impressed Dad and I both were.
Now, here was that surgeon again, on the other side of my desk. Arthritis had taken away some of his height. But he still carried himself with a proud dignity.
His family had brought him to me for worsening memory problems. He thought he was still in practice, although he had retired years ago. He didn’t remember his address, what city we were in, or what a clock looked like.
You hear families talk about how much Alzheimer’s disease takes away from a loved one, but you rarely have the opportunity in a practice to see for yourself. But the impression he’d made on me over 35 years ago was still strong, and I remembered every detail in comparison to the person across from me today.
In his field, he fixed things. With screws, rods, and casts he could restore broken bones, returning them to strength and use – like he had with my grandmother.
Sadly, I can’t return the favor now. I can only offer his family comfort, and answer questions, the way he once did with mine.
I started donepezil and gave them the most optimistic talk I have for these cases. But I know we’re still far away from fixing broken brains.
After he left, I found myself looking in the mirror, thinking of how I saw him then, wondering if his family saw me the same way now, and realizing that someday my children and I may be in the same situation.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Alternative birthing practices increase risk of infection
All three have been associated with sporadic, serious neonatal infections.
The U.S. prevalence of water births – delivering a baby underwater – is currently unknown, but in the United Kingdom the practice is common. According to a 2015 National Health Service maternity survey, approximately 9% of women who underwent vaginal delivery opted for water birth (Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2016 Jul;101[4]:F357-65). Both the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Midwives endorse this practice for healthy women with uncomplicated term pregnancies. According to a 2009 Cochrane Review, immersion during the first phase of labor reduces the use of epidural/spinal analgesia (Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2009. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD000111.pub3). The maternal benefits of delivery under water, though, have not been clearly defined.
Legionella pneumophila is an uncommon pathogen in children, but cases of neonatal Legionnaires’ disease have been reported after water birth. Two affected babies born in Arizona in 2016 were successfully treated and survived (MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2017. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6622a4). A baby born in Texas in 2014 died of sepsis and respiratory failure (Emerg Infect Dis. 2015. doi: 10.3201/eid2101.140846). Canadian investigators have reported fatal disseminated herpes simplex virus infection in an infant after water birth; the mother had herpetic whitlow and a recent blister concerning for HSV on her thigh (J Pediatric Infect Dis Soc. 2017 May 16. doi: 10.1093/jpids/pix035).
Admittedly, each of these cases might have been prevented by adherence to recommended infection control practices, and the absolute risk of infection after water birth is unknown and likely to be small. Still, neither the American Academy of Pediatrics nor the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists currently recommend the practice. ACOG suggests that “births occur on land, not in water” and has called for well-designed, prospective studies of the maternal and perinatal benefits and risks associated with immersion during labor and delivery (Obstet Gynecol. 2016;128:1198-9).
Placentophagia – consuming the placenta after birth – has been promoted by celebrity moms, including Katherine Heigl and Kourtney Kardashian. Placenta can be cooked, blended raw into a smoothie, or dehydrated and encapsulated.
Proponents of placentophagia claim health benefits of this practice, including improved mood and energy, and increased breast milk production. There are few published data to support these claims. A recent case report suggests the practice has the potential to harm the baby. In June 2017, Oregon public health authorities described a neonate with recurrent episodes of group B streptococcal (GBS) bacteremia. An identical strain of GBS was cultured from capsules containing the mother’s dehydrated placenta – she had consumed six of the capsules daily beginning a few days after the baby’s birth. According to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report communication, “no standards exist for processing placenta for consumption” and the “placenta encapsulation process does not eradicate infectious pathogens per se. … Placenta capsule ingestion should be avoided”(MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2017;66:677-8. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6625a4).
Finally, the ritual practice of umbilical cord nonseverance or lotus birth deserves a mention. In a lotus birth, the umbilical cord is left uncut, allowing the placenta to remain attached to the baby until the cord dries and naturally separates, generally 3-10 days after delivery. Describing a spiritual connection between the baby and the placenta, proponents claim lotus birth promotes bonding and allows for a gentler transition between intra- and extrauterine life.
A review of PubMed turned up no formal studies of this practice, but case reports describe complications such as neonatal idiopathic hepatitis and neonatal sepsis. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has issued a warning about lotus births, advising that babies be monitored closely for infection. RCOG spokesperson Dr. Patrick O’Brien said in a 2008 statement, “If left for a period of time after the birth, there is a risk of infection in the placenta which can consequently spread to the baby. The placenta is particularly prone to infection as it contains blood. Within a short time after birth, once the umbilical cord has stopped pulsating, the placenta has no circulation and is essentially dead tissue.”
Interestingly, a quick scan of Etsy, the popular e-commerce website, turned up a number of lotus birth kits for sale. These generally contain a decorative cloth bag as well as an herb mix containing lavender and eucalyptus to promote drying and mask the smell of the decomposing placenta.
In contrast, many pediatricians, me included, are not well informed about these practices and don’t routinely ask expectant moms about their plans. I propose that we can advocate for our patients-to-be by learning about these practices so that we can engage in an honest, respectful discussion about potential risks and benefits. For me, for now, the risks outweigh the benefits.
Dr. Bryant is a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases at the University of Louisville (Ky.) and Norton Children’s Hospital, also in Louisville. She said she had no relevant financial disclosures. Email her at [email protected].
All three have been associated with sporadic, serious neonatal infections.
The U.S. prevalence of water births – delivering a baby underwater – is currently unknown, but in the United Kingdom the practice is common. According to a 2015 National Health Service maternity survey, approximately 9% of women who underwent vaginal delivery opted for water birth (Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2016 Jul;101[4]:F357-65). Both the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Midwives endorse this practice for healthy women with uncomplicated term pregnancies. According to a 2009 Cochrane Review, immersion during the first phase of labor reduces the use of epidural/spinal analgesia (Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2009. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD000111.pub3). The maternal benefits of delivery under water, though, have not been clearly defined.
Legionella pneumophila is an uncommon pathogen in children, but cases of neonatal Legionnaires’ disease have been reported after water birth. Two affected babies born in Arizona in 2016 were successfully treated and survived (MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2017. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6622a4). A baby born in Texas in 2014 died of sepsis and respiratory failure (Emerg Infect Dis. 2015. doi: 10.3201/eid2101.140846). Canadian investigators have reported fatal disseminated herpes simplex virus infection in an infant after water birth; the mother had herpetic whitlow and a recent blister concerning for HSV on her thigh (J Pediatric Infect Dis Soc. 2017 May 16. doi: 10.1093/jpids/pix035).
Admittedly, each of these cases might have been prevented by adherence to recommended infection control practices, and the absolute risk of infection after water birth is unknown and likely to be small. Still, neither the American Academy of Pediatrics nor the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists currently recommend the practice. ACOG suggests that “births occur on land, not in water” and has called for well-designed, prospective studies of the maternal and perinatal benefits and risks associated with immersion during labor and delivery (Obstet Gynecol. 2016;128:1198-9).
Placentophagia – consuming the placenta after birth – has been promoted by celebrity moms, including Katherine Heigl and Kourtney Kardashian. Placenta can be cooked, blended raw into a smoothie, or dehydrated and encapsulated.
Proponents of placentophagia claim health benefits of this practice, including improved mood and energy, and increased breast milk production. There are few published data to support these claims. A recent case report suggests the practice has the potential to harm the baby. In June 2017, Oregon public health authorities described a neonate with recurrent episodes of group B streptococcal (GBS) bacteremia. An identical strain of GBS was cultured from capsules containing the mother’s dehydrated placenta – she had consumed six of the capsules daily beginning a few days after the baby’s birth. According to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report communication, “no standards exist for processing placenta for consumption” and the “placenta encapsulation process does not eradicate infectious pathogens per se. … Placenta capsule ingestion should be avoided”(MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2017;66:677-8. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6625a4).
Finally, the ritual practice of umbilical cord nonseverance or lotus birth deserves a mention. In a lotus birth, the umbilical cord is left uncut, allowing the placenta to remain attached to the baby until the cord dries and naturally separates, generally 3-10 days after delivery. Describing a spiritual connection between the baby and the placenta, proponents claim lotus birth promotes bonding and allows for a gentler transition between intra- and extrauterine life.
A review of PubMed turned up no formal studies of this practice, but case reports describe complications such as neonatal idiopathic hepatitis and neonatal sepsis. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has issued a warning about lotus births, advising that babies be monitored closely for infection. RCOG spokesperson Dr. Patrick O’Brien said in a 2008 statement, “If left for a period of time after the birth, there is a risk of infection in the placenta which can consequently spread to the baby. The placenta is particularly prone to infection as it contains blood. Within a short time after birth, once the umbilical cord has stopped pulsating, the placenta has no circulation and is essentially dead tissue.”
Interestingly, a quick scan of Etsy, the popular e-commerce website, turned up a number of lotus birth kits for sale. These generally contain a decorative cloth bag as well as an herb mix containing lavender and eucalyptus to promote drying and mask the smell of the decomposing placenta.
In contrast, many pediatricians, me included, are not well informed about these practices and don’t routinely ask expectant moms about their plans. I propose that we can advocate for our patients-to-be by learning about these practices so that we can engage in an honest, respectful discussion about potential risks and benefits. For me, for now, the risks outweigh the benefits.
Dr. Bryant is a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases at the University of Louisville (Ky.) and Norton Children’s Hospital, also in Louisville. She said she had no relevant financial disclosures. Email her at [email protected].
All three have been associated with sporadic, serious neonatal infections.
The U.S. prevalence of water births – delivering a baby underwater – is currently unknown, but in the United Kingdom the practice is common. According to a 2015 National Health Service maternity survey, approximately 9% of women who underwent vaginal delivery opted for water birth (Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2016 Jul;101[4]:F357-65). Both the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Midwives endorse this practice for healthy women with uncomplicated term pregnancies. According to a 2009 Cochrane Review, immersion during the first phase of labor reduces the use of epidural/spinal analgesia (Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2009. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD000111.pub3). The maternal benefits of delivery under water, though, have not been clearly defined.
Legionella pneumophila is an uncommon pathogen in children, but cases of neonatal Legionnaires’ disease have been reported after water birth. Two affected babies born in Arizona in 2016 were successfully treated and survived (MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2017. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6622a4). A baby born in Texas in 2014 died of sepsis and respiratory failure (Emerg Infect Dis. 2015. doi: 10.3201/eid2101.140846). Canadian investigators have reported fatal disseminated herpes simplex virus infection in an infant after water birth; the mother had herpetic whitlow and a recent blister concerning for HSV on her thigh (J Pediatric Infect Dis Soc. 2017 May 16. doi: 10.1093/jpids/pix035).
Admittedly, each of these cases might have been prevented by adherence to recommended infection control practices, and the absolute risk of infection after water birth is unknown and likely to be small. Still, neither the American Academy of Pediatrics nor the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists currently recommend the practice. ACOG suggests that “births occur on land, not in water” and has called for well-designed, prospective studies of the maternal and perinatal benefits and risks associated with immersion during labor and delivery (Obstet Gynecol. 2016;128:1198-9).
Placentophagia – consuming the placenta after birth – has been promoted by celebrity moms, including Katherine Heigl and Kourtney Kardashian. Placenta can be cooked, blended raw into a smoothie, or dehydrated and encapsulated.
Proponents of placentophagia claim health benefits of this practice, including improved mood and energy, and increased breast milk production. There are few published data to support these claims. A recent case report suggests the practice has the potential to harm the baby. In June 2017, Oregon public health authorities described a neonate with recurrent episodes of group B streptococcal (GBS) bacteremia. An identical strain of GBS was cultured from capsules containing the mother’s dehydrated placenta – she had consumed six of the capsules daily beginning a few days after the baby’s birth. According to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report communication, “no standards exist for processing placenta for consumption” and the “placenta encapsulation process does not eradicate infectious pathogens per se. … Placenta capsule ingestion should be avoided”(MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2017;66:677-8. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6625a4).
Finally, the ritual practice of umbilical cord nonseverance or lotus birth deserves a mention. In a lotus birth, the umbilical cord is left uncut, allowing the placenta to remain attached to the baby until the cord dries and naturally separates, generally 3-10 days after delivery. Describing a spiritual connection between the baby and the placenta, proponents claim lotus birth promotes bonding and allows for a gentler transition between intra- and extrauterine life.
A review of PubMed turned up no formal studies of this practice, but case reports describe complications such as neonatal idiopathic hepatitis and neonatal sepsis. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has issued a warning about lotus births, advising that babies be monitored closely for infection. RCOG spokesperson Dr. Patrick O’Brien said in a 2008 statement, “If left for a period of time after the birth, there is a risk of infection in the placenta which can consequently spread to the baby. The placenta is particularly prone to infection as it contains blood. Within a short time after birth, once the umbilical cord has stopped pulsating, the placenta has no circulation and is essentially dead tissue.”
Interestingly, a quick scan of Etsy, the popular e-commerce website, turned up a number of lotus birth kits for sale. These generally contain a decorative cloth bag as well as an herb mix containing lavender and eucalyptus to promote drying and mask the smell of the decomposing placenta.
In contrast, many pediatricians, me included, are not well informed about these practices and don’t routinely ask expectant moms about their plans. I propose that we can advocate for our patients-to-be by learning about these practices so that we can engage in an honest, respectful discussion about potential risks and benefits. For me, for now, the risks outweigh the benefits.
Dr. Bryant is a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases at the University of Louisville (Ky.) and Norton Children’s Hospital, also in Louisville. She said she had no relevant financial disclosures. Email her at [email protected].
Opening the door to gene editing?
In early August, in Portland, Ore. The scale and success of such experimentation with human embryos is unprecedented in the United States. Given the highly experimental nature of fertility clinics in the United States and abroad, many suggest that these findings open the door to designer babies. A careful read of the report, however, indicates that the door is still quite closed, perhaps cracked open just a little.
The research team used a new method of cutting the genome, called CRISPR-Cas9. CRISPR utilizes two key components that the team combined in a test tube together: a Cas9 protein that can cut the DNA and a synthetic RNA that can guide the protein to cut a 20-letter sequence in the human genome specifically. In these experiments, the Cas9-RNA protein was designed to cut a pathogenic mutation in the MYBPC3 gene, which can cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The research team could not obtain human zygotes with this mutation on both copies of the genome (a rare homozygous genotype). Such zygotes would have the most severe phenotype and be the most compelling test case for CRISPR. Instead, they focused on gene editing heterozygous human zygotes that have one normal maternal copy of the MYBPC3 gene and one pathogenic paternal copy. The heterozygous zygotes were produced by the research team via in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) using sperm donated by males carrying the pathogenic mutation (Nature. 2017 Aug 2. doi: 10.1038/nature23305).
When researchers injected the Cas9-RNA protein targeting the mutation into already fertilized zygotes, they found that 67% of the resulting embryos had two normal copies of the MYBPC3 gene. Without gene editing, approximately 50% of the embryos would have two normal copies, because the male sperm donor would produce equal numbers of sperm with normal and pathogenic genotypes. Thus, editing likely corrected only about 17% of the embryos that would have otherwise had one pathogenic paternal mutation. Thirty-six percent of embryos had additional mutations from imprecise gene editing. Further, some of the gene edits and additional mutations were mosaic, meaning that the resulting embryo harbored many different genotypes.
To overcome these challenges, the research team precisely controlled the timing of CRISPR injection to coincide with fertilization. With controlled timing, gene editing was restricted to only the paternal pathogenic mutation, resulting in 72% of all injected embryos having two normal copies of the gene in all cells without any mosaicism. Whole genome sequencing revealed no additional mutations above the detection limit of the assay. Finally, preimplantation development proceeded normally to the blastocyst stage, suggesting that the edited embryos have no functional deficits from the procedure.
A surprising finding was that new sequences could not be put into the embryo. The research team had coinjected a synthetic DNA template that differed from the normal maternal copy, but never saw this sequence incorporated into any embryo. Instead, the zygote utilized the maternal copy of the gene with the normal sequence as a template for repairing the DNA cut in the paternal copy produced by CRISPR. The biology behind this repair process is poorly understood and has not been previously reported with other human cell types. These observations suggest that we cannot easily “write” our genome. Instead, our vocabulary is limited to what is already within either the maternal or paternal copy of the genome. In other words, designer babies are not around the corner. While preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is still currently the safest way to avoid passing on autosomal dominant mutations, these new findings could enable correction of such mutations within IVF embryos, resulting in a larger pool of embryos for IVF clinics to work with.
Apart from these technical challenges, the National Academies has not given a green light to implant edited human embryos. Instead, the organization calls for several requirements to be met, including “broad societal consensus” on the need for this type of intervention. While it is not clear whether or how consensus could be achieved, it is clear that scientists, clinicians, and patients will need help from the rest of society for this research to have an impact clinically.
Dr. Saha is assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His lab works on gene editing of human cells. He has patent filings through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation on gene editing inventions.
In early August, in Portland, Ore. The scale and success of such experimentation with human embryos is unprecedented in the United States. Given the highly experimental nature of fertility clinics in the United States and abroad, many suggest that these findings open the door to designer babies. A careful read of the report, however, indicates that the door is still quite closed, perhaps cracked open just a little.
The research team used a new method of cutting the genome, called CRISPR-Cas9. CRISPR utilizes two key components that the team combined in a test tube together: a Cas9 protein that can cut the DNA and a synthetic RNA that can guide the protein to cut a 20-letter sequence in the human genome specifically. In these experiments, the Cas9-RNA protein was designed to cut a pathogenic mutation in the MYBPC3 gene, which can cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The research team could not obtain human zygotes with this mutation on both copies of the genome (a rare homozygous genotype). Such zygotes would have the most severe phenotype and be the most compelling test case for CRISPR. Instead, they focused on gene editing heterozygous human zygotes that have one normal maternal copy of the MYBPC3 gene and one pathogenic paternal copy. The heterozygous zygotes were produced by the research team via in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) using sperm donated by males carrying the pathogenic mutation (Nature. 2017 Aug 2. doi: 10.1038/nature23305).
When researchers injected the Cas9-RNA protein targeting the mutation into already fertilized zygotes, they found that 67% of the resulting embryos had two normal copies of the MYBPC3 gene. Without gene editing, approximately 50% of the embryos would have two normal copies, because the male sperm donor would produce equal numbers of sperm with normal and pathogenic genotypes. Thus, editing likely corrected only about 17% of the embryos that would have otherwise had one pathogenic paternal mutation. Thirty-six percent of embryos had additional mutations from imprecise gene editing. Further, some of the gene edits and additional mutations were mosaic, meaning that the resulting embryo harbored many different genotypes.
To overcome these challenges, the research team precisely controlled the timing of CRISPR injection to coincide with fertilization. With controlled timing, gene editing was restricted to only the paternal pathogenic mutation, resulting in 72% of all injected embryos having two normal copies of the gene in all cells without any mosaicism. Whole genome sequencing revealed no additional mutations above the detection limit of the assay. Finally, preimplantation development proceeded normally to the blastocyst stage, suggesting that the edited embryos have no functional deficits from the procedure.
A surprising finding was that new sequences could not be put into the embryo. The research team had coinjected a synthetic DNA template that differed from the normal maternal copy, but never saw this sequence incorporated into any embryo. Instead, the zygote utilized the maternal copy of the gene with the normal sequence as a template for repairing the DNA cut in the paternal copy produced by CRISPR. The biology behind this repair process is poorly understood and has not been previously reported with other human cell types. These observations suggest that we cannot easily “write” our genome. Instead, our vocabulary is limited to what is already within either the maternal or paternal copy of the genome. In other words, designer babies are not around the corner. While preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is still currently the safest way to avoid passing on autosomal dominant mutations, these new findings could enable correction of such mutations within IVF embryos, resulting in a larger pool of embryos for IVF clinics to work with.
Apart from these technical challenges, the National Academies has not given a green light to implant edited human embryos. Instead, the organization calls for several requirements to be met, including “broad societal consensus” on the need for this type of intervention. While it is not clear whether or how consensus could be achieved, it is clear that scientists, clinicians, and patients will need help from the rest of society for this research to have an impact clinically.
Dr. Saha is assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His lab works on gene editing of human cells. He has patent filings through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation on gene editing inventions.
In early August, in Portland, Ore. The scale and success of such experimentation with human embryos is unprecedented in the United States. Given the highly experimental nature of fertility clinics in the United States and abroad, many suggest that these findings open the door to designer babies. A careful read of the report, however, indicates that the door is still quite closed, perhaps cracked open just a little.
The research team used a new method of cutting the genome, called CRISPR-Cas9. CRISPR utilizes two key components that the team combined in a test tube together: a Cas9 protein that can cut the DNA and a synthetic RNA that can guide the protein to cut a 20-letter sequence in the human genome specifically. In these experiments, the Cas9-RNA protein was designed to cut a pathogenic mutation in the MYBPC3 gene, which can cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The research team could not obtain human zygotes with this mutation on both copies of the genome (a rare homozygous genotype). Such zygotes would have the most severe phenotype and be the most compelling test case for CRISPR. Instead, they focused on gene editing heterozygous human zygotes that have one normal maternal copy of the MYBPC3 gene and one pathogenic paternal copy. The heterozygous zygotes were produced by the research team via in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) using sperm donated by males carrying the pathogenic mutation (Nature. 2017 Aug 2. doi: 10.1038/nature23305).
When researchers injected the Cas9-RNA protein targeting the mutation into already fertilized zygotes, they found that 67% of the resulting embryos had two normal copies of the MYBPC3 gene. Without gene editing, approximately 50% of the embryos would have two normal copies, because the male sperm donor would produce equal numbers of sperm with normal and pathogenic genotypes. Thus, editing likely corrected only about 17% of the embryos that would have otherwise had one pathogenic paternal mutation. Thirty-six percent of embryos had additional mutations from imprecise gene editing. Further, some of the gene edits and additional mutations were mosaic, meaning that the resulting embryo harbored many different genotypes.
To overcome these challenges, the research team precisely controlled the timing of CRISPR injection to coincide with fertilization. With controlled timing, gene editing was restricted to only the paternal pathogenic mutation, resulting in 72% of all injected embryos having two normal copies of the gene in all cells without any mosaicism. Whole genome sequencing revealed no additional mutations above the detection limit of the assay. Finally, preimplantation development proceeded normally to the blastocyst stage, suggesting that the edited embryos have no functional deficits from the procedure.
A surprising finding was that new sequences could not be put into the embryo. The research team had coinjected a synthetic DNA template that differed from the normal maternal copy, but never saw this sequence incorporated into any embryo. Instead, the zygote utilized the maternal copy of the gene with the normal sequence as a template for repairing the DNA cut in the paternal copy produced by CRISPR. The biology behind this repair process is poorly understood and has not been previously reported with other human cell types. These observations suggest that we cannot easily “write” our genome. Instead, our vocabulary is limited to what is already within either the maternal or paternal copy of the genome. In other words, designer babies are not around the corner. While preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is still currently the safest way to avoid passing on autosomal dominant mutations, these new findings could enable correction of such mutations within IVF embryos, resulting in a larger pool of embryos for IVF clinics to work with.
Apart from these technical challenges, the National Academies has not given a green light to implant edited human embryos. Instead, the organization calls for several requirements to be met, including “broad societal consensus” on the need for this type of intervention. While it is not clear whether or how consensus could be achieved, it is clear that scientists, clinicians, and patients will need help from the rest of society for this research to have an impact clinically.
Dr. Saha is assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His lab works on gene editing of human cells. He has patent filings through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation on gene editing inventions.
Psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis research makes headway at GRAPPA meeting
The agenda for this year’s Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA) annual meeting included sessions on juvenile psoriatic arthritis (PsA), the microbiome in psoriasis and PsA, and setting up longitudinal cohort studies. There was also a workshop to define the clinical fit and feasibility of PsA outcome measures for clinical trials and updates on several GRAPPA-associated projects.
The meeting, held July 13-15 in Amsterdam, opened with the annual trainee session. This year’s trainee session attracted more than 40 abstracts, of which 6 were selected for oral presentations on a variety of topics including outcome measure assessment, imaging, the microbiome in PsA, and T-cell subsets in synovial fluid.
The jPsA session also emphasized the need for efforts to better define this disease entity and to study outcomes related to it. The current International League of Associations for Rheumatology criteria for juvenile idiopathic arthritis split jPsA into other subgroups (for example, enthesitis-associated arthritis, undifferentiated arthritis, etc).
Three investigators – Matt Stoll, MD, PhD, Devy Zisman, MD, and Elizabeth Mellins, MD – also presented studies of the epidemiology of jPsA.
Among the most intriguing sessions at the GRAPPA meeting was a series of three talks by Jose Scher, MD, Hok Bing Thio, MD, PhD, and Dirk Elewaut, PhD, that introduced the audience to the complexity of the micro-organisms that call the human host “home” and the potential role in the development of inflammatory conditions, in particular psoriasis and PsA. These talks touched on the potential uses of the microbiome of the gut, skin, and oral mucosa in predicting therapy response and modulating the immune system.
Dafna Gladman, MD, led a session on “how to set up a cohort.” In this session, speakers provided a road map for setting up a longitudinal cohort and discussed opportunities and challenges along the way. This session provided a foundation for a meeting that followed the annual meeting, the GRAPPA Research Collaborative Network meeting (held July 15-16). The RCN meeting aimed to develop a plan for a GRAPPA research network supporting collaborative research to identify biomarkers and outcomes in psoriasis and PsA. Speakers/panelists from academics and industry kicked off the meeting with a discussion of prior experiences in establishing international cohort studies. Subsequent sessions presented individual aspects of beginning a longitudinal cohort study for biomarkers, including methods for sample collection, regulatory processes, and data collected at potential sites; capturing and harmonizing clinical data for such studies; and policies for publication of RCN studies.
This year’s workshop was focused on the GRAPPA-Outcome Measures in Rheumatology (OMERACT) working group’s plan to develop a Core Outcome Measure Set, a collection of outcome measurement instruments to be used in randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) for PsA. During the plenary session, the team presented a process for the group to evaluate instruments, including assessment of match to the domain or concept of interest, feasibility, construct validity, and discrimination (including reliability and the ability to distinguish between two groups such as responders and nonresponders). Breakout groups then discussed one of the six tools being considered and voted on match to the domain of interest and feasibility for RCTs.
In a skin session, ongoing efforts to standardize and simplify the measurement of skin psoriasis in both the clinic and RCTs were presented. While the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) is the current standard for measuring psoriasis severity and response to therapy in RCTs, the PASI is challenging for use in clinical practice. Joseph Merola, MD, presented data to support the use of the psoriasis Physician Global Assessment (PGA) x body surface area (BSA), a simpler measure than the PASI, as a potential substitute for the PASI. Updates from the International Dermatology Outcome Measures board included reporting of the psoriasis core domain set and a summary of the PsA symptoms working group’s efforts to identify patient-reported outcomes to identify and measure PsA among patients enrolled in psoriasis RCTs. April Armstrong, MD, discussed the National Psoriasis Foundation’s efforts to develop treat-to-target goals for psoriasis. Finally, Laura Coates, MBChB, PhD, presented a report on her efforts to examine a variety of psoriasis cut points for minimal disease activity and very low disease activity outcomes.
Dr. Ogdie is director of the Penn Psoriatic Arthritis Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and is a member of the GRAPPA Steering Committee.
The agenda for this year’s Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA) annual meeting included sessions on juvenile psoriatic arthritis (PsA), the microbiome in psoriasis and PsA, and setting up longitudinal cohort studies. There was also a workshop to define the clinical fit and feasibility of PsA outcome measures for clinical trials and updates on several GRAPPA-associated projects.
The meeting, held July 13-15 in Amsterdam, opened with the annual trainee session. This year’s trainee session attracted more than 40 abstracts, of which 6 were selected for oral presentations on a variety of topics including outcome measure assessment, imaging, the microbiome in PsA, and T-cell subsets in synovial fluid.
The jPsA session also emphasized the need for efforts to better define this disease entity and to study outcomes related to it. The current International League of Associations for Rheumatology criteria for juvenile idiopathic arthritis split jPsA into other subgroups (for example, enthesitis-associated arthritis, undifferentiated arthritis, etc).
Three investigators – Matt Stoll, MD, PhD, Devy Zisman, MD, and Elizabeth Mellins, MD – also presented studies of the epidemiology of jPsA.
Among the most intriguing sessions at the GRAPPA meeting was a series of three talks by Jose Scher, MD, Hok Bing Thio, MD, PhD, and Dirk Elewaut, PhD, that introduced the audience to the complexity of the micro-organisms that call the human host “home” and the potential role in the development of inflammatory conditions, in particular psoriasis and PsA. These talks touched on the potential uses of the microbiome of the gut, skin, and oral mucosa in predicting therapy response and modulating the immune system.
Dafna Gladman, MD, led a session on “how to set up a cohort.” In this session, speakers provided a road map for setting up a longitudinal cohort and discussed opportunities and challenges along the way. This session provided a foundation for a meeting that followed the annual meeting, the GRAPPA Research Collaborative Network meeting (held July 15-16). The RCN meeting aimed to develop a plan for a GRAPPA research network supporting collaborative research to identify biomarkers and outcomes in psoriasis and PsA. Speakers/panelists from academics and industry kicked off the meeting with a discussion of prior experiences in establishing international cohort studies. Subsequent sessions presented individual aspects of beginning a longitudinal cohort study for biomarkers, including methods for sample collection, regulatory processes, and data collected at potential sites; capturing and harmonizing clinical data for such studies; and policies for publication of RCN studies.
This year’s workshop was focused on the GRAPPA-Outcome Measures in Rheumatology (OMERACT) working group’s plan to develop a Core Outcome Measure Set, a collection of outcome measurement instruments to be used in randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) for PsA. During the plenary session, the team presented a process for the group to evaluate instruments, including assessment of match to the domain or concept of interest, feasibility, construct validity, and discrimination (including reliability and the ability to distinguish between two groups such as responders and nonresponders). Breakout groups then discussed one of the six tools being considered and voted on match to the domain of interest and feasibility for RCTs.
In a skin session, ongoing efforts to standardize and simplify the measurement of skin psoriasis in both the clinic and RCTs were presented. While the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) is the current standard for measuring psoriasis severity and response to therapy in RCTs, the PASI is challenging for use in clinical practice. Joseph Merola, MD, presented data to support the use of the psoriasis Physician Global Assessment (PGA) x body surface area (BSA), a simpler measure than the PASI, as a potential substitute for the PASI. Updates from the International Dermatology Outcome Measures board included reporting of the psoriasis core domain set and a summary of the PsA symptoms working group’s efforts to identify patient-reported outcomes to identify and measure PsA among patients enrolled in psoriasis RCTs. April Armstrong, MD, discussed the National Psoriasis Foundation’s efforts to develop treat-to-target goals for psoriasis. Finally, Laura Coates, MBChB, PhD, presented a report on her efforts to examine a variety of psoriasis cut points for minimal disease activity and very low disease activity outcomes.
Dr. Ogdie is director of the Penn Psoriatic Arthritis Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and is a member of the GRAPPA Steering Committee.
The agenda for this year’s Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA) annual meeting included sessions on juvenile psoriatic arthritis (PsA), the microbiome in psoriasis and PsA, and setting up longitudinal cohort studies. There was also a workshop to define the clinical fit and feasibility of PsA outcome measures for clinical trials and updates on several GRAPPA-associated projects.
The meeting, held July 13-15 in Amsterdam, opened with the annual trainee session. This year’s trainee session attracted more than 40 abstracts, of which 6 were selected for oral presentations on a variety of topics including outcome measure assessment, imaging, the microbiome in PsA, and T-cell subsets in synovial fluid.
The jPsA session also emphasized the need for efforts to better define this disease entity and to study outcomes related to it. The current International League of Associations for Rheumatology criteria for juvenile idiopathic arthritis split jPsA into other subgroups (for example, enthesitis-associated arthritis, undifferentiated arthritis, etc).
Three investigators – Matt Stoll, MD, PhD, Devy Zisman, MD, and Elizabeth Mellins, MD – also presented studies of the epidemiology of jPsA.
Among the most intriguing sessions at the GRAPPA meeting was a series of three talks by Jose Scher, MD, Hok Bing Thio, MD, PhD, and Dirk Elewaut, PhD, that introduced the audience to the complexity of the micro-organisms that call the human host “home” and the potential role in the development of inflammatory conditions, in particular psoriasis and PsA. These talks touched on the potential uses of the microbiome of the gut, skin, and oral mucosa in predicting therapy response and modulating the immune system.
Dafna Gladman, MD, led a session on “how to set up a cohort.” In this session, speakers provided a road map for setting up a longitudinal cohort and discussed opportunities and challenges along the way. This session provided a foundation for a meeting that followed the annual meeting, the GRAPPA Research Collaborative Network meeting (held July 15-16). The RCN meeting aimed to develop a plan for a GRAPPA research network supporting collaborative research to identify biomarkers and outcomes in psoriasis and PsA. Speakers/panelists from academics and industry kicked off the meeting with a discussion of prior experiences in establishing international cohort studies. Subsequent sessions presented individual aspects of beginning a longitudinal cohort study for biomarkers, including methods for sample collection, regulatory processes, and data collected at potential sites; capturing and harmonizing clinical data for such studies; and policies for publication of RCN studies.
This year’s workshop was focused on the GRAPPA-Outcome Measures in Rheumatology (OMERACT) working group’s plan to develop a Core Outcome Measure Set, a collection of outcome measurement instruments to be used in randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) for PsA. During the plenary session, the team presented a process for the group to evaluate instruments, including assessment of match to the domain or concept of interest, feasibility, construct validity, and discrimination (including reliability and the ability to distinguish between two groups such as responders and nonresponders). Breakout groups then discussed one of the six tools being considered and voted on match to the domain of interest and feasibility for RCTs.
In a skin session, ongoing efforts to standardize and simplify the measurement of skin psoriasis in both the clinic and RCTs were presented. While the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) is the current standard for measuring psoriasis severity and response to therapy in RCTs, the PASI is challenging for use in clinical practice. Joseph Merola, MD, presented data to support the use of the psoriasis Physician Global Assessment (PGA) x body surface area (BSA), a simpler measure than the PASI, as a potential substitute for the PASI. Updates from the International Dermatology Outcome Measures board included reporting of the psoriasis core domain set and a summary of the PsA symptoms working group’s efforts to identify patient-reported outcomes to identify and measure PsA among patients enrolled in psoriasis RCTs. April Armstrong, MD, discussed the National Psoriasis Foundation’s efforts to develop treat-to-target goals for psoriasis. Finally, Laura Coates, MBChB, PhD, presented a report on her efforts to examine a variety of psoriasis cut points for minimal disease activity and very low disease activity outcomes.
Dr. Ogdie is director of the Penn Psoriatic Arthritis Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and is a member of the GRAPPA Steering Committee.