Tag: babies

The Facts about Tylenol and Autism

Posted on by Lone Candle

The studies that best control for confounding factors do not find a link between Tylenol and autism.

Among all studies, some find a negative correlation, some find no correlation, and many find a very small positive correlation, but in the best studies, this is not found, indicating there isn’t a causal link.

Tylenol helps control fever, which can prevent fever-caused health issues with the baby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx5xH1zs4Tc

America’s Baby Formula Rules Are Due for an Update

Posted on by Lone Candle

“It’s crucial that more types of formula be available, not only for infants with dietary complications, but also to strengthen the supply chain. Despite American regulators’ past hard line on foreign formulas, they opened the door to European formulas during the 2022 formula crisis. If that door can be opened during a crisis, it can stay open to give parents more options for caring for their babies.”

https://reason.com/2025/07/13/americas-baby-formula-rules-are-due-for-an-update/

The astonishing link between bats and the deaths of human babies

Posted on by Lone Candle

“By compiling and analyzing a huge amount of government data, environmental economist Eyal Frank, the study’s sole author, discovered that in regions with outbreaks of white nose syndrome, a wildlife disease that kills bats, the rate of infant mortality increased by nearly 8 percent relative to areas without the disease.
There’s a clear reason for this, according to the paper. Most North American bats eat insects, including pests like moths that damage crops. Without bats flying about, farmers spray more insecticides on their fields, the study shows, and exposure to insecticides is known to harm the health of newborns.”

https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/370002/bats-link-babies-death-study-white-nose-syndrome

Pregnancy care deserts are growing. Indigenous babies are at risk.

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Many providers like Balay see an obvious link between rising congenital syphilis rates and sparse access to obstetric care (i.e., care for pregnant people, also called maternity or prenatal care). That’s largely because, historically, prenatal care is where syphilis transmission to a fetus has been interrupted. Testing is standard in prenatal care, and all but eight states require syphilis testing during pregnancy.
The problem is simple, as Balay explains. “There just is not enough obstetric care,” she said. And as prenatal care becomes increasingly scarce, so do opportunities to catch and treat syphilis.

Balay is not alone in thinking that scarcity helps explain what’s happening with congenital syphilis, especially among Indigenous Americans.

In a recent CDC report, 37 percent of US babies with syphilis were born to parents who didn’t get timely syphilis testing during pregnancy. But that number was higher, 47 percent, when the parents were American Indian. And most of those parents who didn’t get timely testing didn’t get any prenatal care at all.

In rural states, increasingly inadequate maternity care access is making intensified mother-to-child syphilis transmission all but inevitable. That puts Indigenous women and their newborns at especially high risk.”

…

“One of the most promising solutions to South Dakota’s maternal care scarcity problem got a boost last year when the state’s voters approved an initiative to expand Medicaid beginning in early 2023. The expansion means more than 52,000 of the state’s residents are newly insured, which shifts the costs of their care from IHS to a better-funded federal program. It also means that hospitals caring for these patients will get paid more for the care they provide to the thousands of tribal residents newly covered by Medicaid. And most importantly to patients, expansion will make it more financially feasible to get the care they need.”

https://www.vox.com/health/2024/1/3/24010263/pregnancy-maternity-prenatal-care-deserts-rural-syphilis-indigenous-women-babies-south-dakota

It’s getting increasingly dangerous to be a newborn in the US

Posted on by Lone Candle

“in 2022, the death rate for American infants increased for the first time in 20 years.”

…

“rates of congenital syphilis — that is, syphilis infections acquired in the womb — have risen tenfold over the past decade.
Although a lot of different risk factors drive each of these trends, there’s an important one they have in common: bad — and worsening — health care access for mothers and babies.

In the US, the obstacles mothers face in accessing health care are too often insurmountable — and as this latest data shows, the consequences to American children are dire. Things might only get worse, some experts fear, as financial, political, and social pressures drive providers further from many of the places where they’re needed most.

“We only are hearing about more [obstetricians] leaving and more maternity wards closing,” said Tracey Wilkinson, a pediatrician who specializes in reproductive health issues at Indiana University’s medical school. “I am terrified about what the data is going to look like next year.””

https://www.vox.com/23952456/syphilis-mortality-death-infant-newborn-congenital-babies-prenatal-maternity-pregnancy-desert