News

Next Friday marks the 30th birthday of world's first "test tube" baby. Louise Joy Brown was conceived in a British laboratory and then inserted into her mother's womb for the rest of her fetal development. Her birth - on July 25, 1978 - brought hope to couples who could not conceive a child the old-fashioned way. In fact, four million babies worldwide have been born through the process known as in vitro fertilization.

"What once seemed incredible and controversial has become commonplace," says an editorial in this week's edition of Nature, a British-based scientific journal.

Although most of the babies seem to have been born healthy, "safety concerns about IVF have still not evaporated, even after 30 years," the editorial states.

In the same edition of the journal, Alastair Sutcliffe of University College London points out there is evidence to suggest some rare genetic disorders, including Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome, are more common in children conceived through IVF.

The editorial laments that very few studies have been set up to follow IVF offspring into middle age and beyond in order to detect potential problems that may not arise for many years.

There's no doubt that the miracle of IVF has brought happiness to many homes, but the Nature editorial argues prospective parents "should at least know what those risk are," no matter how small.

BOOB TUBE

Better not leave on the TV when baby is in the room.

A new study suggests that television, even if it is just serving as background noise, may interfere with an infant's normal mental development.

"An awful lot of households pretty much leave the television on all day long and that is clearly inappropriate if you are concerned about allowing some undistracted quiet time for the child," said lead scientist Daniel Anderson, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

For the study, researchers watched individual children play with a variety of toys for one hour. During half that time, a TV in the room was playing the game show Jeopardy!. The rest of the time, the TV was turned off. A total of 50 children, aged 1 to 3, were observed.

When the television was tuned to Jeopardy!, each child focused for a shorter period of time on any one toy, compared with when the TV was off, according to the findings published in the journal Child Development.

Dr. Anderson noted that the infants, who were too young to understand the content of the game show, did not directly watch the television. Instead, they would occasionally look up at the TV set and then return to playing. But that seems to have been enough to interrupt their concentration.

"The brain is changing very rapidly during the first three years of life," he said. And during the process of play, a child develops the ability to focus attention for a sustained period - a crucial skill in adult life.

More research is needed to determine the long-term consequences of background television on a child's development.

"But at least in theory, anything that is routinely disruptive of that [learning process] is likely to have a negative impact upon the child," Dr. Anderson said.

MAKING SMOKING COOL

Internal industry documents and independent test results show that U.S. tobacco companies manipulated the menthol content of certain cigarette brands in order to lure young smokers. According to the report published in the American Journal of Public Health, menthol helps mask the bad taste so new smokers can tolerate cigarettes long enough to become hooked.

BAD BUG, GOOD BUG?

Just a few years ago, scientists discovered that a common stomach bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, increases the risk of developing ulcers and stomach cancer.

But new research suggests this potentially harmful microbe has a good side - it may help protect kids from developing asthma.

A study by Martin Blaser and Yu Chen of New York University's school of medicine found that young children infected with H. pylori were less likely to get asthma, compared with those free of the bug.

The latest research fits in with the "hygiene hypothesis," which holds that society's increasing focus on cleanliness may be partly to blame for the rise in asthma, allergies and other immune-related disorders.

"Your immune system is not fully formed at birth, but continues to develop in early life," Dr. Blaser explained. In particular, exposure to common microbes may be necessary for the immune system to mature properly. Without such early prodding, the body may overreact when it encounters even minor irritants later in life. In the case of asthma, airborne particles could trigger the lungs to go into spasm.

Dr. Blaser noted that H. pylori has been infecting humans for thousands of years and may have been one of the microbes that helped prime the immature immune system.

However, in recent decades, H. pylori infections have steadily declined thanks to cleaner homes and the advent of antibiotics. "About 70 per cent of the people born in 1915 had H. pylori," Dr. Blaser said, adding that a recent U.S. survey found only 5.4 per cent of those born in 1995 were infected with the bug.