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Warning to parents: If your children aren't getting enough sleep, they may start acting like they have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

A new Finnish study reveals that young children who sleep less than 7.7 hours a night score much higher on measures of hyperactivity and impulsivity than kids who get more shut-eye.

These behavioural problems are often associated with ADHD. But, in this case, the study was based on 280 healthy boys and girls, seven to eight years of age, who were apparently free of the disorder.

The lead researcher, Juulia Paavonen of Finland's National Institute for Health and Welfare, noted that numerous studies have investigated the effects of sleep deprivation on adults. Far fewer trials have looked at the consequences of short sleep duration in children.

One American study, however, estimated that one-third of children in the United States suffer from inadequate sleep. Dr. Paavonen suspects children in many other countries aren't snoozing enough.

Lots of children go to bed too late, get up too early or have specific disorders that prevent them from achieving a full and restful night's sleep, she said in a telephone interview from Helsinki.

It's possible some otherwise healthy children who don't get enough sleep could be incorrectly diagnosed with ADHD, she suggested. "Whenever a child is suspected of having ADHD, it's important to see ... if there are any sleeping difficulties that might contribute to the behavioural problems."

So how much sleep is enough? There isn't one simple answer because different people require different amounts of sleep and that applies to children, too.

"The only way to know whether the child is sleeping enough is to follow his or her behaviour during the daytime to see if there are any symptoms of inadequate sleep such as tiredness or other problems," she said.

To further complicate matters, many parents seem unaware of just how much sleep their children are getting. In the Finnish study, published in the journal Pediatrics, parents were asked to keep a one-week sleep record for their children. As well, each child wore a wrist device called an actigraph, which measures movement and provides a relatively accurate measure of time spent asleep.

Many parents overestimated their children's sleep time by an hour or more - compared with the data provided by the actigraphs.

SHAKEN BABY SYNDROME

A leading pediatric organization says doctors should no longer use the term "shaken baby syndrome" and instead adopt the more medically appropriate terminology of "abusive head trauma."

The name change is partly motivated by court cases in which the existence of the syndrome has been challenged, said Robert Block, a co-author of the new policy position of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Some defence lawyers, for instance, have argued that an infant can't be shaken hard enough to damage the brain without actually breaking the neck. Or they may say there isn't proof a baby was shaken.

Dr. Block, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma's school of community medicine in Tulsa, insisted that infants and children can indeed be harmed by a vigorous jostle. But the important issues of head trauma and child abuse are being lost in word games.

"Rather than saying you have to prove the baby was shaken, what we really want people to focus on in the courts, as well as in clinical circumstances, is that you have a brain that has been damaged one way or another," he explained in an interview.

"It doesn't matter, quite frankly, whether the baby was shaken, or impacted, or thrown against the wall or whatever else might have happened to the baby. What matters is the brain is injured."

In a policy statement published in the journal Pediatrics, Dr. Block and colleagues write what's needed is broad medical terminology that is "inclusive of all mechanisms of injury including shaking" and the expression "abusive head trauma" fits that bill.

END BIG PHARMA PAYOLA

Doctors should stop accepting free meals, gifts and other payola from the pharmaceutical industry because the freebies are a corrosive influence on the medical profession, the U.S.-based Institute of Medicine urges.

"It's time to end a number of long-accepted practices that create unacceptable conflicts of interest, threaten the integrity of the medical profession and erode public trust while providing no meaningful benefits to patients and society," said Bernard Lo, chairman of the institute's committee that announced the recommendations this week.

Drug companies and medical-device manufacturers spend billions annually trying to woo the medical profession, hoping physicians will prescribe their medications or recommend the use of their products. Aside from freebies, companies often finance educational courses - which can be slanted toward the firm's products - or pay doctors to recruit patients for clinical trials.

The institute, part of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, is calling for sweeping changes meant to "improve disclosure of financial ties between the medical community and industry; limit company payments and gifts; and remove industry influence from medical education."

And, in particular, the institute wants government to pass legislation that would force industry to disclose on a public website the payments made to doctors, researchers, medical associations and even patient-advocacy groups.

"A public record like this could serve as a deterrent to inappropriate relationships and undue industry influence," the institute said in a statement. "It would also provide medical institutions with a way to verify the accuracy of information that physicians, researchers and senior officials have disclosed to them."