Breastfed Kids More Likely to Recover from Stuttering

The analysis found a dose-dependent association between breastfeeding and a child's likelihood of recovering from stuttering, with children who were breastfed longer more likely to recover.

Boys, who are disproportionately affected by stuttering, appeared to benefit the most.

Boys in the study who breastfed for more than a year had approximately one-sixth the odds of developing persistent stuttering than boys who never breastfed, the team found.

The researchers, University of Illinois speech and hearing science professor emerita Nicoline Ambrose and doctoral student Jamie Mahurin-Smith (now at Illinois State University), found no evidence that income or maternal education had any influence on stuttering in their sample.

The researchers questioned the mothers about their children's willingness and ability to breastfeed, and also found no evidence of an underlying neurological problem that could have inhibited the children's ability to breastfeed and to speak fluently later in life.

"We've known for years that both genetic and environmental factors contributed to stuttering, but our understanding of the specific environmental variables in play has been murky," Mahurin-Smith said.

"These findings could improve our understanding of stuttering persistence and recovery," the researcher said.

The study is published in the Journal of Communication Disorders.

Source-ANI

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Women With Severe Injuries are Less Likely Than Men to be Treated in a Trauma Center: Study

"Gender-based disparities in access to healthcare services in general have been recognized for some time and evidence is emerging that these disparities extend to the treatment of severe injuries in trauma centers," says lead author Andrea Hill. MSc, PhD, a post-doctoral fellow at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. "Our study confirms and expands on these earlier findings by evaluating the relationship between gender and trauma center care in a large cohort of patients from across Canada."

The study results will be presented at the ATS 2013 International Conference in Philadelphia.The retrospective cohort study included 98,871 adult patients with severe injury (Injury Severity Score>15 or death within 24 hours of hospital admission).Of the 33,080 women in the cohort, 49.6% received care in a trauma center, compared to 63.2% of males, a statistically significant (p<0.0001) difference. In the subgroup of patients aged 65 or older, 37.5% of women received trauma center care, compared with 49.6% of men, again a significant (p<0.0001) difference. After adjusting for the effects of clinical, demographic, and socioeconomic variables, severely injured womenremained less likely to be treated in a traumacenter than men (odds ratio 0.79, 95% confidence interval 0.76 - 0.82). Separate analyses of women with fall-related injuries and women with motor vehicle-related injuries revealed that they were also less likely to receive trauma center care than men. This pattern of gender differences in access to trauma center care was consistent across different mechanisms of injury, different income levels and among both urban and rural patients."Our study provides yet more evidence of important gender differences in access to trauma center care for people with severe injuries," said Dr. Hill. "Future research should focus on the factors underlying these differences and on the effects of these disparities on patient outcomes."

Source-Eurekalert

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