The Association between Sex Hormones, Pubertal Milestones and Benzophenone-3 Exposure, Measured by Urinary Biomarker or Questionnaire.

Experimental studies have suggested benzophenone-3 (BP-3), a sunscreen ingredient, may have endocrine-disrupting properties. A cohort of girls were recruited at ages 6-7 years and returned semi-annually for pubertal maturation staging, provided blood for serum hormone analyses [estradiol, estrone, testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate (DHEA-S)], and urine to measure BP-3 concentrations. We found a significant negative linear association between amount of reported sunscreen use and testosterone levels at the onset of puberty (N = 157, adjusted β = -0.

Sex Hormone Phenotypes in Young Girls and the Age at Pubertal Milestones.

Context: The age of pubertal onset is influenced by many variables in young girls. Previous studies have not examined sex hormones longitudinally around the time of breast development and their relationship to pubertal onset.

Objective: We sought to use an unbiased statistical approach to identify phenotypes of sex hormones in young girls and examine their relationship with pubertal milestones.

Time for evidence-based, standardized donor size matching for pediatric heart transplantation.

Background: Accurately predicting cardiac size by other body parameters has long been problematic to determine whether a donor heart will serve a given waitlist candidate, yet hundreds of heart donors are turned down annually for size mismatch.

Objectives: We sought to describe how donor body weight parameters are currently utilized in cardiac transplantation and its influence on waitlist outcomes.

Methods: From the United Network for Organ Sharing database, pediatric (age <18 years) heart transplant candidates were divided into lower quartile, interquartile, and upper quartile categories based on final maximum acceptable donor-candidate weight ratio (DCW), expressed as percentage.

Characteristics and diagnosis of pregnancy and lactation associated breast cancer: Analysis of a self-reported regional registry.

Background: Pregnancy-associated breast cancer (PABC) is the most common malignancy in pregnancy. However due to its infrequent occurrence, PABC continues to be poorly understood.

Methods: We performed a retrospective study using self-reported data from 1079 eligible women in a regional breast cancer registry.

Comprehension and perceptions of study participants upon receiving perfluoroalkyl substance exposure biomarker results.

Background: Measurement of environmental biomarkers in biomedia is increasingly used as a method of exposure characterization in human population studies. Reporting the results of biomarker measurements back to study participants has been controversial, including questions of ethics and whether the study participants would want to receive and would understand the results.

Methods: Recently we mailed individual measurements of two serum biomarkers, perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) to participants in three exposure studies of persons living in the Ohio River Valley, of whom 60 were parents of children who had been sampled.

Coughing, sneezing, and aching online: Twitter and the volume of influenza-like illness in a pediatric hospital.

This study investigates the relation of the incidence of georeferenced tweets related to respiratory illness to the incidence of influenza-like illness (ILI) in the emergency department (ED) and urgent care clinics (UCCs) of a large pediatric hospital. We collected (1) tweets in English originating in our hospital's primary service area between 11/1/2014 and 5/1/2015 and containing one or more specific terms related to respiratory illness and (2) the daily number of patients presenting to our hospital's EDs and UCCs with ILI, as captured by ICD-9 codes. A Support Vector Machine classifier was applied to the set of tweets to remove those unlikely to be related to ILI.

Feasibility of a Friendship Network-Based Pediatric Obesity Intervention.

Background: There is growing evidence supporting social network-based interventions for adolescents with obesity. This study's aim was to determine the feasibility of a social network-based intervention by assessing adolescents' friendship networks, willingness to involve friends in treatment, and how these factors influence enjoyment.

Methods: Adolescents (N = 42) were recruited from a tertiary care obesity clinic.

Culture of non-genital sites increases the detection of gonorrhea in women.

Study Objectives: Although gonorrhea may infect the cervix, rectum, or pharynx of women, culturing non-cervical sites is rare outside of sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinics. This study aims to compare rectal and pharyngeal gonorrhea prevalence in adolescent and adult women and to calculate the percentage of cases that would be missed with cervical culture alone.

Design: Retrospective review of two laboratory databases.