MONDAY, April 27 (HealthDay News) -- Children who take medication to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) do better in elementary school than those who don't, a new study has found.

Of 594 children whose parents reported an ADHD diagnosis, those who took medication scored 2.9 points higher on standardized math tests and 5.4 points higher on reading tests than children with ADHD who were not taking medication.

Researchers used a nationally representative sample from the Childhood Longitudinal Study of children who entered kindergarten in 1998, and followed them through fifth grade.

The higher test scores were comparable with the progress expected during one-fifth of a school year for math and about one-third of a school year for reading, according to the study funded by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health.

"It's one more important piece of evidence that states clearly that taking the medication isn't just about parents or teachers feeling better about the child or thinking he or she is more compliant," said study author Stephen P. Hinshaw, chair of the department of psychology at University of California, Berkeley. "On an objective, rigorously-designed standardized test of reading and math ability, we have evidence there are 'real world' gains in achievement."

The study is published in the May issue of Pediatrics.

About 4.4 million children in the United States, or nearly 8 percent, have been diagnosed with ADHD, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 56 percent of those children take medication to treat the disorder and help them focus.

Boys are more likely to be diagnosed than girls. The incidence rate for boys is 10.9 percent compared to 4.4 percent of girls, according to CDC statistics from 2003.

Symptoms of ADHD include distractibility, impulsivity, excessive daydreaming, squirming and fidgeting and difficulty finishing tasks. There are several types: one that is marked primarily by inattentiveness, one marked by hyperactivity and a combined type.

ADHD has been linked with low academic achievement, including lower math and reading scores, higher rates of special education placement and high drop-out rates.

Prior research has shown the benefits of ADHD medications to children with the disorder, including improvements in short-term memory, performance of school-related tasks and rate of homework completion.

But this is one of the first to look at academic performance over the long term, said study author Richard Scheffler, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley.

Dr. Jon Shaw, director of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine, said the study confirms what many mental health professionals and parents have known for years about the benefits of ADHD medication.

"This well-designed research study substantiates what has been known clinically for many years, that children compromised by the symptoms of ADHD are handicapped in their school experiences and academic performance," Shaw said. "Judicious use of appropriate medications for this neurobiological condition helps these children to be successful in school and in the academic arena."

Although medications have been shown to help children with ADHD, the extensive use of drugs has been controversial, with some claiming children are being medicated unnecessarily.

The study is not advocating that every child who has attention problems be put on medication, Hinshaw said. An ADHD diagnosis should only be made after a careful evaluation by doctors.

And not all children will see test scores rise as a result of medication.

"This doesn't mean every single child will show that benefit," Hinshaw said. "Some will show more, some less. The family and clinician have to evaluate carefully the trade-off between the potential benefits and potential side effects."

While the ADHD medications improved scores, children with ADHD still had test scores that were lower on average than children without the disorder.

In addition to prescriptions, children with ADHD need active parent and teacher involvement and possible tutoring to make sure they achieve in school.

More information

CHADD   has more on ADHD.

MONDAY, April 27 (HealthDay News) -- Diluted bleach baths offer a safe, simple and inexpensive way of treating children with eczema, according to U.S. researchers.

The skin disease, which affects 17 percent of school-age children, can affect youngsters' appearance, sleep, and their ability to concentrate in school.

Eczema-related itching can be so bad that children sometimes break the skin and get chronic skin infections that can be difficult to treat, the researchers noted.

The study, by a team at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, included 31 patients, ages 6 months to 17 years old, with moderate or severe eczema plus a skin infection. Half of the children took diluted bleach baths (half a cup of bleach per full standard tub), while the others had a placebo mixed into their bath water. The children were told to soak in the baths for five to 10 minutes at a time, two times a week.

Because the amount of bleach used was so small, the diluted bleach baths were nearly odor-free, the study noted.

Over one to three months, the children who took the diluted bleach baths had a reduction in eczema severity that was five times greater than those in the placebo group. In fact, the children taking the baths showed such rapid improvement in eczema and infection symptoms that the researchers stopped the study early, so that children in the placebo group could get the same amount of relief.

"The eczema kept getting better and better with the bleach bath, and these baths prevented it from flaring again, which is an ongoing problem for these kids," Dr. Amy S. Paller, the chair of dermatology, and a professor of pediatrics, said in a Northwestern University news release. "We presume the bleach has antibacterial properties and decreased the number of bacteria on the skin, which is one of the drivers of flares."

The study will be published in the April 28 issue of the journal Pediatrics.

More information

The Nemours Foundation has more about children and eczema  .

THURSDAY, April 16 (HealthDay News) -- American adolescents who live in states that comply with tobacco sales laws are less likely to pick up a smoking habit than are those who live where the laws are not vigorously enforced, a new study has found.

And raising the price of a pack of cigarettes might have an equal, if not greater, effect, the study also showed.

"Efforts to prevent the sale of tobacco to children pay off," said study author Dr. Joseph R. DiFranza, a professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. "It's very effective at reducing the number of kids who smoke."

Since 1992, states have been required to prohibit the sale and distribution of tobacco to minors. But in 1996, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration issued a regulation that, in essence, put some teeth into the legislation that requires states to pass and enforce so-called no-sale laws.

Though there has been some debate about the effectiveness of the congressional mandate, a growing body of evidence demonstrates that enforcing existing laws reduces the number of adolescent smokers.

DiFranza and his colleagues analyzed data from a 2003 survey of 16,244 adolescents, nearly all 15 to 17 years old, to obtain information on smoking habits. In addition, they looked at state-collected data on merchants' compliance with anti-tobacco laws. Then they correlated the data, taking into account such factors as cigarette prices, restaurant smoking policies, anti-smoking campaigns and demographic information that included age, gender, race, ethnicity and parents' education level.

The researchers found that, as merchants more diligently enforced the ban on tobacco sales to minors and as the price of cigarettes rose, the likelihood of teens smoking dropped.

Improved compliance with the laws from 1997 to 2003 was credited with about a 21 percent decline in the likelihood of a teen smoking. Price increases for a pack of cigarettes during that time reduced the odds by about 47 percent, the study found.

The results appear online April 17 in the journal BMC Public Health.

"Cigarette smoking is a major contributor to many of the chronic diseases that we see in society today -- cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia and other forms of cognitive decline and low birth weight," said Dr. Ted Schettler, science director at the Science & Environmental Health Network in Ames, Iowa. "And adolescent smoking increases the risk of lifelong smoking."

According to the American Lung Association, about 90 percent of smokers started before age 21, and an estimated 4.5 million U.S. adolescents smoke.

"Up until now, it's been controversial about whether all the effort put into enforcing the law has been worthwhile or not," DiFranza said. "Some people had made halfhearted efforts to obey the law, and those have not worked at reducing either the number of stores that sell tobacco to kids or the number of kids that smoke."

The finding from DiFranza's study mirrors that from a study published this month on the effect of laws targeting the sale of alcohol to minors.

In that study, states that had enacted more punitive laws -- including use-and-lose laws that allow the suspension of a driver's license for any underage alcohol violation and zero-tolerance laws that make it illegal for young people to drive with any amount of alcohol in their system -- had fewer drinking-related fatalities among teens than did states that did not have such laws. The results were published in the April 7 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

"In the past, we've had success in reducing the number of teens who smoke by enforcing these laws in communities, but this is the first study to show that it works at the national level," DiFranza said. "It's important to show that this strategy works across the whole geography of the United States, in rural and urban areas."

Schettler said that it's important to note "that many of these strategies go well beyond just advising people not to smoke and really get into more systemic public health interventions and trying to create, at the societal level, barriers to smoking."

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on teen smoking.

MONDAY, March 30 (HealthDay News) -- Physical fitness programs in schools improve many aspects of children's health, but they don't appear to combat obesity, a new study in the Canadian medical publication CMAJ shows.

Improvements in blood pressure, muscle mass, bone mineral density, lung capacity and flexibility were some of the benefits experienced by the more than 18,000 students participating in "physical activity interventions" at their schools; however, the program's did not noticeably lower the children's body-mass index (BMI) -- a common measurement of obesity.

The study authors, from the BC Children's Hospital in Vancouver, concluded that the program's overall health benefits still warrant their inclusion in school curriculum, even if they don't reduce obesity.

The failure to reduce BMI scores might have been because the programs did not offer enough vigorous activity or that other outside factors may have had a greater effect on weight, the authors suggested.

The rate of childhood obesity in the United States has tripled in the past 40 years and similar increases are occurring in Canada and most of Europe, according to background information in the article.

Louise Baur, from the University of Sydney in Australia, in a commentary in the same issue of CMAJ, writes that reversing trends in childhood obesity requires a broader, long-term approach -- from healthier school meals to changes in how cities are developed so that they encourage more physical activity.

"No simple or short-term changes, such as a physical activity intervention for a limited length of time in the school curriculum, can be expected to influence the prevalence of obesity," wrote Baur, who specializes in children's health.

More information

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