Personalised medicine: Australia aims to end childhood cancer deaths

An Australian plan to eliminate childhood cancer deaths using personalised medicine will be made available to all Australian children with the condition from 2023 Health 15 February 2022 By Alice Klein DNA sequencing helps offer a personalised approach to cancer Getty Images/iStockphoto An ambitious Australian programme to use personalised medicine to reduce the number of children … Read more

First Gene Therapy for Tay-Sachs Disease Successfully Given to Two Children

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Two babies have received the first-ever gene therapy for Tay-Sachs disease after over 14 years of development. Tay-Sachs is a severe neurological disease caused by a deficiency in an enzyme called HexA. This enzyme breaks down a fatlike substance that normally … Read more

Mummified Children Found in Peru May Have Been a Sacrificial Escort to The Underworld

Six mummified children thought to have been sacrificed hundreds of years ago, apparently to accompany a dead nobleman to the afterlife, have been unearthed in a tomb near Lima, archaeologists reported.   The tiny skeletons, wrapped tightly in cloth, were found in the grave of an important man, possibly a political figure, discovered last November … Read more

Incredible 5,000-Year-Old Drum Found in The Grave of ‘Cuddling’ Prehistoric Children

A Stonehenge-era chalk drum is the “most important piece of prehistoric art to be found in Britain in the last 100 years,” according to the British Museum. The 5,000-year-old drum, discovered within an ancient children’s burial site, is to go on display for the first time next week, per CNN.    It will be unveiled, six … Read more

Robots help some sick children ‘attend’ school. Kids are working with scientists to make them better | Science

A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 375, Issue 6581. In a sunny room at the Boys & Girls Club in Calistoga, a tiny city in California’s Napa Valley, Veronica Ahumada is setting up her robot when a bespectacled little boy wanders in to ask what she’s doing. Ahumada points to the device—basically … Read more

How much more contagious could the coronavirus get?

The coronavirus is evolving to become more transmissible, and eventually it could even overtake measles, the most contagious virus we know of Health 26 January 2022 By Alice Klein An illustration of SARS-CoV-2 Gerd Altmann/Pixabay Over the past two years, we have witnessed evolution in action, with new variants of the coronavirus becoming increasingly contagious. … Read more

Landmark Poverty Experiment Shows Extra Money Changes Babies’ Brains

Putting cash in the hands of mothers can help shape the brains of their babies, according to a rigorous randomized study in the United States. Family income has been linked to child development numerous times in the past in observational studies, but this is the first time researchers have found direct experimental evidence of how … Read more

Mysterious Effects of Smoking May Surface Even 3 Generations Later, Study Finds

The great-granddaughters of men who smoked cigarettes when they were pre-pubescent boys are more likely to carry excess fat on their bodies as young women several decades later, a rather startling study has found.   The discovery – which scientists claim is one of the “first human demonstrations of transgenerational effects of an environmental exposure … Read more

New Immunotherapy Study Gives Encouraging News For Children With Peanut Allergy

Children who are highly allergic to peanuts stand a significant chance to reduce the risk of adverse and potentially life-threatening reactions to the food, new research suggests.   In a clinical trial of young peanut-allergic children aged between one and three years old, the majority of participants who underwent an oral immunotherapy regime saw marked … Read more