Efforts to cut risky sexual behavior by U.S. teens stall

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AIDS Conference Update: Man Cured of AIDS, Teens Engaging in Risky Business

That the research around HIV cure is so prominent at AIDS 2012 is proof of where the science has come these past few years, we now actively talk of potential scientific solutions in a way perhaps we weren

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More teens using condoms over past two decades

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Survey Finds Big Drop in Sexual Activity Among Black Teens

HealthDay – 14 hrs ago TUESDAY, July 24 (HealthDay News) -- Black teenagers in the United States have become much less sexually active over the past two decades, and those who do have sex appear to be more likely to use condoms, a new survey has found.

The declines are "dramatic," said report author Laura Kann, who studies adolescent health for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The numbers don't disclose anything about why black teens might have changed their behavior. "This tells us what kids do, but not why," Kann said.

Overall, teens of all racial and ethnic groups are about as sexually active as they were a decade ago. And the rate of condom use by teens -- just six in 10 used them the last time they had sex -- hasn't changed much since the 1990s.

By contrast, the numbers for black teens are strikingly different. The percentage who reported ever having sex fell from 82 percent in 1991 to 60 percent in 2011. Kann said the numbers coincide with drops in teen pregnancy and births.

Increased education about HIV/AIDS among blacks, leadership in the black community and a public health focus on black Americans could explain the change, Kann said.

The new CDC teen-sex survey also reveals that:

The percentages of students who've had sex have remained fairly stable over the last 20 years for Hispanic students (49 percent in 2011) and whites (44 percent in 2011).Overall, 47 percent of all teens surveyed said they'd ever had sex, down from 54 percent in 1991. The rate has barely changed since 2001.About one-third of students said they'd had sex within the past three months, and 15 percent said they'd had sex with four or more partners.The percentage of sexually active teens who use condoms grew from 46 percent in 1991 to 60 percent in 2011, although the number hasn't changed much in recent years. Black teens are more likely to use condoms: their rate is 65 percent.

The recent stabilization of condom use could have something to do with less focus on HIV, which has largely become a treatable disease, Kann said. Also, "the percentage of high school students overall who have had HIV education has dropped since 1997. That hasn't helped any either."

The new survey results come from the CDC's National Youth Risk Behavior Survey of students in grades 9 through 12 from both public and private schools. About 15,000 students take the surveys each year.

Jennifer Manlove, area director of Fertility and Family Structure with the Child Trends advocacy group in Washington, D.C., said the survey shows that much of the evolution toward less sexual activity occurred in the 1990s, even among black teens.

"There's been a little bit more since 2000, but not really that much. The big news in the 1990s was the real focus on the AIDS epidemic and a lot of attention given to that," she said.

Dr. David Katz, director of Yale University's Prevention Research Center, said the study "is a mix of good news and persistent causes for concern."

Nearly half of teens in this country are still sexually active, "and a third or more (of those) did not use condoms most recently," he said. "This means that a very large population of our young people remains vulnerable to all of the perils of unprotected sex, HIV included. So this report is not a cause for celebration. It tells of a job that can be done when we address it well, and of a mission far from accomplished that deserves our more devoted attention."

He added: "No child should get HIV because our society is squeamish about the readily available means of preventing that."

The survey findings were scheduled to be released Tuesday at the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., and published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

More information

For more about teen sexual health, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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Many Teens With High Blood Pressure Don't Get Needed Tests

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Smoking in movies may turn teens to cigarettes: study

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Dangerous Rage May Be Common Among U.S. Teens

HealthDay – 8 mins ago MONDAY, July 2 (HealthDay News) -- Almost two-thirds of U.S. teens have had an anger attack so severe they have destroyed property, or threatened or attacked another person, a new study finds.

When these attacks persist, the syndrome can be considered intermittent explosive disorder. One in 12 U.S. teens may have the condition, which usually surfaces in late childhood, the researchers say.

"This is one of the most common adolescent disorders in America, and the most important ignored disorder among youth in America," said lead researcher Ronald Kessler, a professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

"For reasons that are unclear to me,

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More Than 1 in 4 Teens Have 'Sexted': Study

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Active, Outdoor Teens Are Happier Teens: Study

HealthDay – 1 hr 23 mins ago FRIDAY, June 22 (HealthDay News) -- Teens who engaged in more moderate-to-vigorous outdoor activity reported better health and social functioning than their peers who spent hours in front of television and computer screens, a new study in Australia has found.

The teens who had the highest perceived health in the study spent an average of 2.5 hours more per day playing sports or doing other high-intensity activity than their least-active counterparts, according to the researchers.

The research, done at the University of Sydney, found that youths in the study overall spent an average of 3.3 hours a day playing video games, watching television or doing other sedentary activities, compared with only 2.1 hours in physical activity.

The findings suggest that parents need to limit how much time their children spend using electronic media, the lead author said.

"Parents should be conscious of the fact that outdoor physical activity is beneficial to their child's overall health and well-being, and should try to limit the time their child spends in front of the screen," said Bamini Gopinath, a senior research fellow at the university's Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research.

Although no causal link was established, the study provides "another piece of evidence" that increasing physical activity and decreasing screen time "would be beneficial" to teens, said Gopinath, adding that "the impact of activity behaviors persists over the long term."

The study, published in the July issue of Pediatrics, was conducted from 2004 to 2009.

Study questionnaires asked how much time 1,216 teens spent on outdoor exercise compared to indoor activities including computer use for recreation and homework. Other sedentary activities such as reading were included. The data were collected at age 12, and again five years later. At that time, another group of 475 teenagers was recruited from the same schools in the Sydney area. Both groups responded to items about their health and general well-being.

The questionnaire included 23 items about the teens' health and physical functioning, as well as self-esteem, peer relationships and school.

Not surprisingly, more time spent reading and doing homework was associated with better school performance.

The more-active teens had significantly better scores relating to social functioning, or getting along with peers. Teens "who rarely exercised" were more likely to report "feelings of loneliness and shyness."

"Improved understanding of these relationships could help in developing interventions to promote general well-being among adolescents," the study authors concluded.

Another expert said he wasn't surprised by the findings.

"It makes sense that these kids who are getting outside, playing sports and running around are going to feel better than those kids who are sitting alone with a screen," said Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children's Hospital.

He cautioned against "over-interpreting" the results because other factors not looked at in the study "may have more influence." For example, he noted that the study did not show whether some teens avoided outdoor sports because they were less healthy to begin with.

But the findings are "worth paying attention to," Rich said.

It also makes sense that kids who spend their time "running around in the fresh air" and playing sports are going to be "not only physically healthier, but socially healthier because they're learning to work things through with other teens," he said.

The study gave "more objective data that supports what your mom always said, which is 'go outside and play,' proving mom was right," Rich added.

More information

To learn more about children and physical exercise, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Depressed Teens Who Respond to Treatment Less Likely to Abuse Drugs

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CDC: Older teens often text behind the wheel

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Sex Ed For Teens With Intellectual Disabilities

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Obese Teens Already Have Heart Damage

Sobering news was presented at the annual meeting of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology: Obese teens, without any signs or symptoms of cardiovascular disease, were found to have significant structural and functional damage to their hearts.

The researchers found that as the BMI Body Mass Index. BMI is a statistical measurement of body weight based on the person's height and weight. It does not actually measure the body fat percentage but provides an estimation of a healthy body weight. Normal BMI for adults ranges from 18.5-24.9 increased in these teens so did the thickness of the arteries of the heart.  Increased structural thickness correlated with decreased left ventricular velocity, indicating that the structural heart problems were impairing healthy heart function.

This study is a bit of a shocker as it shows adverse changes to the heart prior to the onset of a cardiovascular risk profile.  This means that parents could think their obese child is simply overweight but not in any real trouble that needs attention.

This study implies that diligent efforts to help overweight children lose weight must be a priority.  Obesity will drastically impair the health of young people, at ever-earlier ages.  Twenty years ago type 2 diabetes was virtually non existent in teens.  Now it is common.

The fact that obesity in teens is correlated with heart damage is a major wake-up call.  If nothing is done we will have a generation of citizens who have health debilitating heart disease in their 30’s. 

There are plenty of BMI Body Mass Index. BMI is a statistical measurement of body weight based on the person's height and weight. It does not actually measure the body fat percentage but provides an estimation of a healthy body weight. Normal BMI for adults ranges from 18.5-24.9 calculators on the WEB.  Another easy and highly accurate test is to measure the waistline and compare the measurement to height.  Waistline circumference in inches times two should never be more than height in inches; this measurement is appropriate for children and teens.  Once this line is crossed we know that cardiovascular disease processes have been set in motion, regardless of age.  Unfortunately, we now know that such processes include heart damage.  Such damage is reversible over time, but only if weight is lost.

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U.S. Teens Heading for Heart Trouble: Study

HealthDay – 1 hr 31 mins ago MONDAY, May 21 (HealthDay News) -- Many American teenagers, including some with a normal, healthy weight, already have one or more risk factors for heart disease, researchers say.

About 22 percent of today's teens have borderline-high or already high LDL cholesterol -- that's the bad type. And 15 percent have pre-diabetes or diabetes, according to the new research based on data spanning from 1999 to 2008.

When the study authors looked at the year-by-year differences, however, one risk factor stood out. At the start of the study period, the rate of pre-diabetes/diabetes was 9 percent. By the end of the study, that number was 23 percent.

"Pre-diabetes and diabetes increased over time among adolescents," said the study's lead author, Ashleigh May, an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

May added that the rate of pre-diabetes/diabetes as well as the other cardiovascular risk factors went up as weight increased.

The study was released online May 21, and will be published in the June print issue of Pediatrics.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in U.S. adults, according to background information in the study. Although most manifestations, such as stroke and heart attack, don't occur until adulthood, there's been increasing evidence that risk factors for cardiovascular disease may be evident much sooner. And, with more and more American children and teens becoming overweight and obese, health experts are increasingly concerned about the possibility of cardiovascular risk factors showing up at younger ages.

The current study reviews data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 through 2008. The survey includes a nationally representative sample of the U.S. population. For this study, the investigators focused on the 3,383 teens who were between 12 and 19 years old.

During the study period, 14 percent either had or were at risk for high blood pressure (prehypertensive/hypertensive), 22 percent had borderline-high or high bad (LDL) cholesterol levels, and 6 percent had low levels of the good (HDL) cholesterol.

For the study period overall, 15 percent of teens were classified as having pre-diabetes or diabetes. The rate of pre-diabetes/diabetes was the only risk factor that increased from the beginning of the study to the end.

May noted that this might have more to do with how they tested for diabetes, as they only measured one fasting blood sugar level. Normally, diabetes or pre-diabetes isn't diagnosed unless there are at least two abnormal fasting blood sugar levels, because levels tend to fluctuate.

In addition, May said the plateauing of the other risk factors appears to mirror the plateau that has occurred in childhood obesity. But, she added, both the diabetes trend and the plateauing trend will need more research over time to see if these trends continue.

The study also found that as weight increased, so did the cardiovascular risk factors. However, a significant number of normal-weight children also showed signs of trouble. About 10 percent were in the pre-hypertensive/hypertensive category, more than 15 percent had elevated bad cholesterol and more than 10 percent had pre-diabetes/diabetes, the results showed.

Dr. Dorothy Becker, chief of endocrinology and diabetes at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, said she wasn't surprised by the findings, even that some normal-weight children were showing heart disease risk factors. She said that anyone who's eating a diet high in sugar and fat will likely have problems, even if it isn't readily apparent in their weight.

"It's not just what you look like. You can have a pretty lousy lifestyle without being overweight," she said.

Doctors, parents, school and hospital administrators, and community leaders all need to take overweight and obesity seriously, she said. "Physicians need to say this is important. It's as big a risk to your health as smoking or unprotected sex," Becker said.

The good news is that lifestyle changes can make a difference.

May said that "it's never too late to improve your lifestyle, physical activity and eating habits. Changing those things, if they're on the wrong course now, can be beneficial."

Becker agreed. "If teens can lose weight, they'll have a pretty good prognosis," she said. "If they don't make a change, then they'll carry all of these risk factors into adulthood, and that's like having a ticking time bomb over your head. You don't necessarily know when it's going to go off, but it's likely that it will."

More information

The Weight-control Information Network has advice on helping your overweight child.

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"Pre-diabetes,"' diabetes rising among U.S. teens

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CDC: Half of overweight teens have heart risk

Half the nation's overweight teens have unhealthy blood pressure, cholesterol or blood sugar levels that put them at risk for future heart attacks and other cardiac problems, new federal research says.

And an even larger proportion of obese adolescents have such a risk, according to the alarming new numbers.

"What this is saying, unfortunately, is that we're losing the battle early with many kids," said Dr. Stephen Daniels, a University of Colorado School of Medicine expert who was not involved in the study.

People can keep their risk of heart disease very low if they reach age 45 or 50 at normal weight and with normal blood pressure, normal cholesterol and no diabetes. So these results are not good, he said.

The study was released Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research focused on 3,383 adolescents ages 12 through 19. The youths were part of an intensive national study that involves interviewing, weighing, measuring and performing medical tests on people across the country.

The ongoing CDC study is considered a gold standard for looking at national health trends, said Dr. William Mahle, an Emory University pediatric cardiologist.

So there was some good news, Mahle said, that the study found no increase in levels of obesity, high blood pressure or bad cholesterol during the years it covered

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Stricter Seat Belt Laws Get Teens to Buckle Up, Study Shows

HealthDay – 1 hr 24 mins ago MONDAY, April 23 (HealthDay News) -- Teen drivers and passengers are more likely to use seat belts if they're in states with primary-enforcement seat belt laws, often promoted as "click it or ticket" laws, a new study finds.

A primary law allows police to stop and ticket drivers solely for not wearing a seat belt. Under a secondary law, police can only ticket unbelted drivers if they are stopped for other reasons, such as speeding.

Primary seat belt laws have been proven to reduce death rates in traffic collisions, according to the report published in the April 19 online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

In the new study, researchers examined data from more than 3,000 U.S. high school student drivers who took part in the 2006 National Young Driver Survey. The analysis revealed that teens in states with secondary laws were 12 percent less likely to wear a seat belt when driving and 15 percent less likely to do so as a passenger than teens in states with primary laws.

In addition, the investigators found that in states with secondary laws, teens' use of seat belts decreased as they progressed from learner to unrestricted license holder. This did not occur in states with primary laws.

The findings also revealed that blacks, rural residents, academically challenged students and those who drove pick-up trucks had particularly low rates of seat belt use.

"This study showed that primary-enforcement safety belt laws may play a key role in mitigating the disparity in safety belt use among certain teenaged subpopulation groups," lead study author Dr. J. Felipe Garcia-Espana, of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said in a journal news release.

"Because some teenaged subpopulations have lower safety belt use, even with primary enforcement laws, combined approaches that include upgrades to laws with campaigns and enforcement might be warranted," the study authors concluded.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says parents are the key to safe teen drivers.

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Use of Ecstasy, Speed by Teens Tied to Later Depression

HealthDay – 29 mins ago WEDNESDAY, April 18 (HealthDay News) -- Teens who use the party drugs ecstasy (MDMA) and speed (methamphetamine and/or amphetamine) appear to face a notably higher risk of depression afterward, new Canadian research suggests.

Interviews and mental health assessments conducted among nearly 3,900 10th-grade residents of Quebec revealed that, compared to non-users, adolescents who acknowledged taking either speed or ecstasy had a 60 percent to 70 percent greater risk of experiencing telltale signs of depression a year after their last recorded use.

What's more, those who said they had tried both speed and ecstasy showed double the risk for depressive symptoms, when compared to non-users.

Nevertheless, study co-author Jean-Sebastien Fallu, an associate professor in the school of educational psychology at the University of Montreal, cautioned that his team cannot draw a specific cause-and-effect line between such recreational drug use and depression.

"But researchers have advanced two possible mechanisms," he said. "That these drugs have a neurotoxic affect on serotonin

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Drug, Alcohol Abuse Common Among U.S. Teens, Study Finds

HealthDay – 21 mins ago MONDAY, April 2 (HealthDay News) -- Alcohol and drug use is common among American teens and more than 15 percent of them meet the criteria for substance abuse, a new study finds.

"Once again, we are reminded that in most instances experimentation with alcohol and drugs begins during adolescence," said Bruce Goldman, director of Substance Abuse Services at The Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y.

"Unfortunately, many youth are at risk of developing abuse and dependency problems due to factors including genetic predisposition, environmental availability, school difficulties, social/family problems and co-occurring psychiatric or behavioral disorders," added Goldman, who was not involved in the new study.

In the study, Joel Swendsen, of the University of Bordeaux in France, and colleagues analyzed data from a U.S. survey of more than 10,000 teens between the ages of 13 and 18. They found that more than 78 percent of the oldest teens had consumed alcohol, about 47 percent consumed at least 12 drinks a year, and about 15 percent met the criteria for alcohol abuse.

The study also found that 81.4 percent of the oldest teens reported the opportunity to use illicit drugs, 42.5 percent used drugs, and 16.4 percent were drug abusers.

The median age when teens started substance use was 14 for regular alcohol use or abuse with or without dependence, 14 for drug abuse with dependence, and 15 for drug abuse without dependence.

"Because the early onset of substance use is a significant predictor of substance use behavior and disorders in a lifespan, the public health implications of the current findings are far-reaching," the team wrote in the April issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

More must be done to make sure youth don't start out early on the road to substance abuse, Goldman said.

"It is imperative that families, schools, police, youth groups, and communities all join together to prevent or delay the onset of substance use as long as possible," he said. "Social norms have a very powerful impact on drug-use patterns. We need to create norms where substance use and availability, especially for young people, is not acceptable."

That means giving young people the resources to fight back, Goldman added. "Effective early intervention needs to be universally available to youth that are found to be using substance," he said.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism offers advice on parenting to prevent childhood alcohol use.

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Technology’s benefits for teens vs. YouTube fights, cyber-harassment, webcam spying

D.C. public schools: Lottery results reveal a new set of popular kidsMaclaren files for bankruptcy and a stereotype goes down with itWhat parents can learn when a child is rejected from schoolGeneration Collaboration: Consulting your kids on where to shop, what to buyStories By DateFull Monthly Archive Posted at 01:58 PM ET, 03/07/2012By Janice D'Arcy

The Pew Research Center and Elon University have released a survey of Internet experts that found just over half of them believe that the connectivity of teens today will ultimately benefit them. The optimists think kids can now access human knowledge at a greater speed and to a greater extent than ever before, according to the survey.

But at the same time, the downsides of this connectivity are on display across the country, including a courtroom in New Jersey, a playground in Massachusetts, and recent cases in this region.

Last week, I wrote about a fight between girls at Montgomery County’s Churchill High that was briefly posted on YouTube. The Post’s Donna St. George recently wrote about a boy in Calvert County who was so humiliated by the broadcasting of a fight he was involved in that he’s left school altogether.

Meanwhile, the trial of Dharun Ravi in New Jersey is currently fusing “parental anxieties about the hidden worlds of teen-age computing, teen-age sex, and teen-age unkindness,” the New Yorker’s Ian Parker writes in a recent piece that details the high-profile trial.

Ravi is on trial for intimidating and invading the privacy of his Rutgers roommate Tyler Clementi. He faces ten years in prison.

The case stems from a night when Ravi rigged his webcam so that he could remotely spy on his roommate, who was gay, and another man. Ravi shared what he saw with a friend, tweeted about it and later planned to hold an online party to spy on the roommate again.

Clementi discovered the spying. He then killed himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

The Ravi case is a legally complicated one and it remains unclear how closely Clementi’s suicide can be tied to the cyber-spying. Neither it nor the other incidents discount what the experts polled by Pew had to say about the potential of technology in kids’ lives.

What the incidents do suggest is that technology is also amplifying the hardest parts of adolescence — the cruelty, the betrayals, the embarrassments. It’s hard to feel worldly when the entire universe you occupy has witnessed your humiliation.

The issue for parents is how to help kids use technology for its benefits and avoid its more nefarious temptations. Is the answer to engage kids in more conversations about technology? Is it to monitor them more? Is it to shoot their laptops?

We are supposed to be the helicopter-parent generation, no? Where are we on this?

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