MONDAY, Jan. 28 (HealthDay News) -- Some 7,000 American children under the age of 11 are treated each year in hospital emergency rooms because of problems with cough and cold medications, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday.

"In the majority of cases, these ER visits are due to unsupervised ingestion," said study lead author Dr. Melissa K. Schaefer, of the CDC's Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion.

The 7,000 cases are just under 6 percent of emergency room visits from all other medications combined, Schaefer said. "Any medication in the hand of a 3-year-old is a problem," she said. "It is important to focus on this, because these are all preventable emergency department visits."

In the study, released early by the journal Pediatrics and published online Monday, researchers used data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance project to analyze emergency department visits due to cough and cold medications in 2004 and 2005.

They found that children aged 2 to 5 years old made up 64 percent of all emergency department visits for adverse reactions to cough and cold medications. Among these youngest children, 80 percent of the problems arose from unsupervised ingestions. Overall, roughly two-thirds of all the children studied wound up in the ER because of unsupervised ingestion.

Most of the children, 93 percent, did not need to be admitted to the hospital. But, one-fourth needed additional treatment to get the medicine out of their system, the researchers reported.

The over-the-counter cough and cold products the researchers reviewed in the study included decongestants, expectorants and antitussives. The products may also have included antihistamines. Labels could include the terms "nasal decongestants," "cough suppressants," "expectorants" and "antihistamines."

Earlier this month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a public health advisory stating that over-the-counter cough and cold medicines should not be given to infants and children under the age of 2. The safety of these products for children ages 2 to 11 is currently being reviewed by the FDA.

Right before the FDA held an advisory committee meeting in October that ultimately led to a recommendation for a ban on cold medicines for children under the age of 2, the makers of dozens of cough and cold remedies targeted to infants voluntarily recalled some of these products. Overall, there are approximately 800 popular cough and cold medicines sold in the United States. Experts estimate that Americans spend about $2 billion annually on these types of medications.

The CDC cautioned that parents also should not use products intended for older children to treat young children, and should keep all cough and cold medications out of the reach of children. In addition, parents should throw out products they may have that were sold to be used for infants and toddlers aged 2 and younger.

The CDC's Schaefer thinks that parents need to be educated about the dangers of letting children get their hands on these medications. In addition, Schaefer's team recommends that the makers of these drugs redesign their packaging to make it impossible for children to open these drugs.

"Parents should not substitute medications meant for older children for children under 2," Schaefer said. "In addition, parents should not tell children these medications are candy, and they should not take their own medications in front of their children."

The head of the drug industry group the Consumer Healthcare Products Association said the new study underscores the safety of these products when used properly.

"This CDC review puts the overall discussion of pediatric cough and cold remedies into perspective by focusing on concrete data that address the real issue," Linda A. Suydam, president of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, said in a statement. "These medicines are safe when used as directed, and this government review underscores the importance of educating consumers -- especially those with small children -- on the safe use and safekeeping of medicine."

One expert sees no reason for parents to give children these medicines in the first place.

"There is no evidence that these medicines work to make you better faster," said Dr. Karen Sheehan, medical director of injury prevention and research at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and medical director of the Injury Free Coalition for Kids. "There is no reason to make them available, because we know bad things can happen to kids."

The way to treat a child with a cold is to make the child comfortable, give Tylenol for fever, lots of liquids and use a humidifier, Sheehan said. "The kids have the ability [to get better] on their own," she said.

More information

For more on coughs and colds, visit the American Lung Association  .

FRIDAY, Jan. 25 (HealthDay News) -- When it comes to getting cutting-edge treatments for cancer, teens and young adults might be missing out.

In a study of young oncology patients, researchers found that 38 percent of those under 15 participated in a clinical trial, while just 27 percent of those over 15 were enrolled in a clinical trial. With the overall cancer survival rate lower among teens and young adults than it is among younger children, access to clinical trials appears to be a contributing factor, the researchers noted. In many cases, a clinical trial simply wasn't available for the adolescents, according to the study, which was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology.

"We've known for several years that older adolescents and young adults don't have the same clinical trial rate as younger patients but didn't know all of the reasons why," explained study author Dr. Peter Shaw, director of the Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Program at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.

"This study showed that the number one cause they're not put into clinical trials was that there aren't clinical trials available for them. Another reason is that many are referred to adult oncologists who may not be as familiar with pediatric disease and its patterns," said Shaw. "And that translates into worse survival rates, because clinical trial enrollment is correlated with better survival when it comes to cancer."

The current study included data from 640 children, adolescents and young adults with cancer who were treated at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh between July 2001 and June 2006. Five hundred and one were under 15. Overall, 36 percent were treated in a clinical trial, according to the study.

In the older age group, 57 percent weren't enrolled in a clinical trial because none were available. In children under 15, that number was 41 percent.

"Now that we realize that there's such a deficit, we have to make hard decisions about which clinical trials to run. Funding has been cut and that impacts how the Children's Oncology Group operates. Less protocols can be open," said Shaw.

"This is a historical problem. Some of the diseases span an 18-year range and have never been the domain of either pediatrics or adult oncology," said Dr. Richard Gorlick, division chief of pediatric hematology/oncology at The Children's Hospital at Montefiore in New York City.

"There's not necessarily a fixed dividing line when you think of pediatric or medical [adult] oncology," said Gorlick. "There's been a blurring of the age boundary, and adolescents and young adults should be treated by a provider who has the most expertise in their particular cancer area. The rare adolescent who has colon cancer would probably be better suited to being treated by a medical oncologist. But an adolescent with sarcoma, lymphoma or leukemia may do better with a pediatric oncologist. It all depends on the diagnosis."

Ideally, Shaw said that adolescents and young adults diagnosed with cancer will see both a pediatric and a medical oncologist to make sure they're getting the best treatment possible. Or, even better, he said, is to find an adolescent and young adult cancer treatment program.

More information

To gain a better understanding of the risks and benefits of clinical trials in cancer treatment, visit the Teens Living with Cancer  .

THURSDAY, Jan. 10 (HealthDay News) -- A gene that appears to play a key role in the development of autism has been identified by three different teams of researchers.

UCLA scientists found that the gene -- contactin-associated protein-like 2 (CNTNAP2) -- is most active in brain regions involved with language and thought and that the presence of the gene may explain speech delays in children with autism.

Their study appears in the Jan. 10 online edition of The American Journal of Human Genetics.

The same issue also features reports from research teams at Johns Hopkins University and Yale University that link the CNTNAP2 gene to autism. Meanwhile, a consortium of autism researchers from the Boston area reported in the Jan. 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that abnormalities on chromosome 16 seemed to raise the risk of a certain kind of autism.

The UCLA scientists noted that the gene they discovered is tied closely to language development.

"This gene not only may predispose children to autism. It also may influence the development of brain structures involved in language, providing a tangible link between genes, the brain and behavior," principal investigator Dr. Daniel Geschwind, a professor of human genetics at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, said in a prepared statement.

In the study, researchers analyzed DNA samples from almost 500 families that had at least one autistic child and found that CNTNAP2 showed up consistently in the samples.

The UCLA team also examined CNTNAP2 presence in early brain tissue and found that the gene was most active in developing brain structures involved in language and thought.

Researcher Brett Abrahams, a postdoctoral fellow, explained the significance of the finding by comparing the brain to a house.

"We know that different rooms in houses serve different purposes. For example, if an item only appears in the kitchen, it makes sense to assume it's involved in cooking. Or if we find an object only in the bedroom, it's likely connected to sleeping," he said in a prepared statement. "The fact that we found CNTNAP2 concentrated in the brain's structures that are involved in higher cognition gives us strong clues about how its disruption might adversely shape brain development, including speech and language."

The UCLA researchers also found that the gene was strongest in families with autistic boys, compared to families with autistic boys and girls or families with autistic girls only.

"Autism strikes boys three times as often as girls," Maricela Alarcon, first study author and an assistant professor in residence of neurology at UCLA, said in a prepared statement. "This finding may partly explain why."

In the Johns Hopkins study, researchers found that a specific variation in the structure of CNTNAP2 makes a child more vulnerable to developing autism. They looked at more than 1,300 children with autism and their parents and found that where a single segment of the genetic code of CNTNAP2 could contain either the chemical base adenine or thymine, children with autism tended to have the thymine variant.

The researchers also found that children with autism were about 20 percent more likely to have inherited the thymine variant from their mothers than from their fathers.

"This is a common variant. People inherit it all the time. Our finding that it's associated with autism more often when it's inherited from mothers is intriguing, but needs to be replicated," Johns Hopkins researcher Aravinda Chakravarti said in a prepared statement.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about autism.

MONDAY, Nov. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Blood group-incompatible heart transplants can safely be performed in infants age 1 year or younger and could help reduce death rates among infants with heart problems, say U.S. researchers.

Of 591 cases examined from national data reported to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS)from 1999 to 2007, 35 infants (6 percent) received hearts from blood-group incompatible donors.

"There was no difference in outcome between incompatible and compatible transplantation in these infants. Survival between the two groups was similar (75 percent) at three years," senior study author Dr. Luca A. Vricella, chief of pediatric heart transplantation at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, said in a prepared statement.

Using blood-group incompatible donor hearts could significantly reduce the number of infants who die while waiting for a new heart. Babies under the age of 12 months have immature immune systems that are less likely to attack a donated heart, the researchers explained.

"Mortality could be reduced by at least 20 percent using incompatible donors. There would be a huge impact on infants who otherwise have to rely on a very small donor pool," Vricella said.

Currently, the average wait for a new infant heart is more than two months, and up to 40 percent of infants die before they receive a donor heart.

The study was to be presented Monday at the American Heart Association annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.

More information

The American Heart Association has more about heart transplants in infants and children  .