In U.S., Obesity Afflicts Even Some of the Tiniest Tots

American kids are becoming obese, or nearly so, at an increasingly young age, with about one-third of them falling into that category by the time they're 9 months old, researchers have found. There are some caveats about the research, however. The infants were not studied recently: They were born about a decade ago. And it's not clear how excess weight in babies may affect their health later in their lives. The study found no guarantee that a baby who's overweight at 9 months will stay flabby when his or her second birthday rolls around.

Still, the study in the January-February 2011 issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion does present a picture of babies and infants who are carrying around a lot of extra weight. The findings also suggest that small changes in an infant's diet can make a big difference, said Dr. Wendy Slusser, medical director of a children's weight program at Mattel Children's Hospital at the University of California, Los Angeles. For example, she said, "if you don't give your kid juice and have them eat the fruit instead, suddenly there's 150 calories less a day that can make a big difference in weight gain over a long term."

The researchers examined federal data about 16,400 children in the United States who were born in 2001. After adjusting the statistics so they wouldn't be thrown off by such factors as high numbers of certain kinds of kids, the study authors found that 17 percent of 9-month-olds were obese and 15 percent were at risk for obesity, for a total of 32 percent. At two years, 21 percent were obese and 14 percent were at risk of becoming obese, the investigators found.

Mom's Suicide May Raise Child's Odds for Later Suicide Attempt

New research out of Sweden suggests that a mother's suicide may influence the risk for later suicide attempts in her children, even more so than the suicide of a father. The research doesn't prove that suicides by parents, either the mother or the father, causes offspring to face a higher risk of trying to kill themselves. And the researchers noted that the number of offspring in the study who ended up hospitalized after a suicide attempt was small.

Still, "pediatricians, surviving parents and educators should be aware of the possible risk and provide appropriate referral sources for these children as needed," said study lead author S. Janet Kuramoto, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2007, suicide was the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for almost 34,600 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicide is more prevalent among men, with about four times as many males as females killing themselves.

Previous studies have hinted that the children of parents who committed suicide were at higher risk of feeling suicidal themselves, but it wasn't clear if the problems were connected to the parent's suicide or to the fact that the parent died, whatever the cause, Kuramoto said. The authors of the new study sought to gain more insight. They examined Swedish databases to discover what happened to 5,600 children whose mothers committed suicide and 17,847 whose fathers committed suicide during the years 1973-2003. The researchers compared that data to rates of children whose parents died in accidents.

Eye Exercises Might Boost Fine Depth Perception

A new study says a push-pull training method is a good way to correct a condition called sensory eye dominance, in which an imbalance between the vision strength of the eyes impairs fine depth perception. This method which involves making the weaker eye work while the stronger eye is suppressed could be especially important for people who depend on fine depth perception for their work, such as dentists, surgeons, machinists and athletes. It's also likely that the method can be adapted for treating children with amblyopia (also known as lazy eye), which affects 2 to 3 percent of children in the United States, said the authors of the study published in the Oct. 14 online edition of the journal Current Biology.

"After a 10-day training period, we found our participants' sensory eye dominance is significantly reduced as the two eyes become more balanced. As a consequence, their depth perception also improves significantly," Teng Leng Ooi, of Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University, said in a news release from the journal's publisher. It's not clear how the push-pull training method works to readjust the balance between the eyes, the study authors noted. "Possibly, by causing the strong eye to be suppressed at all times during the training, we reduce the inhibitory hold of the strong eye on the weak eye," Ooi said. Further studies are needed to determine exactly how this eye training technique improves depth perception, the study authors suggested.