A team of medical and climate scientists, including Jane Burns MD, at UC San Diego, Rady Children’s Hospital, reveal that the agent of Kawasaki disease is not only reaching Japan from the Asian mainland by Pacific winds, but it seems to be crossing the Pacific Ocean to infect children in Hawaii and the North American mainland. The seasonal analyses suggest that the peak in KD cases at each of the three locations is linked to a coherent seasonal shift in winds that simultaneously exposes Japan to air masses from central Asia, and Hawaii and California to air masses from the western North Pacific. The interannual analysis also suggests that the enhancement of this trans-Pacific circulation pattern is associated with unusually high KD activity in Japan and San Diego.

Although pediatric onychomycosis is relatively uncommon, it does appear to be increasing worldwide, especially in adolescents, according to recent research findings published by Sheila Fallon Friedlander, M.D., clinical professor of pediatrics and medicine at the University of California, San Diego.

Howard Taras, M.D., professor of pediatrics, was chosen by the Epilepsy Foundation of San Diego County as one of San Diego’s Health Heroes. Honored as one of San Diego’s Health Heroes, Dr. Taras was instrumental in a campaign persuading the Legislature to pass a law so children with epilepsy can get seizure medication at school.

Research findings published by Chambers et al reveal women exposed to certain antidepressants during pregnancy were significantly less likely to breastfeed their babies compared to unexposed women. The results of the study were recently published online in the Journal of Human Lactation.

February 3, 2012, La Jolla, CA - Victor Nizet, MD, professor of pediatrics and pharmacy and Division Chief of Pediatric Pharmacology and Drug Discovery at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Rady Children’s Hospital, San Diego, has been elected to Fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently awarded $742,222 to UC San Diego’s Dr. Sandra Daley, professor of pediatrics and director of the Comprehensive Research Center in Health Disparities, to fund the Health Careers Opportunity Program/San Diego Regional Consortium (HCOP/SDRC).

Nature Review Research Highlight, January 2012: Dr. Lars Bode, Assistant Professor in neonatal medicine and pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at UC San Diego’s Department of Pediatrics, recently published in GUT that human milk oligosaccharides (HMO) significantly lowered the risk of Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC) in neonatal rats.

La Jolla, January, 2012 - Kerri Boutelle, PhD, an associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine are developing new ways to treat overeating in children and adults.Their study, published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, describes two new methods for reducing overeating.

The study appears online Jan. 16 ahead of print publication in the April issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. Chambers et al stressed that their research illustrates there is no safe amount of drinking during pregnancy, since the amount of drinking that produces fetal alcohol syndrome in infants varied from woman to woman.