NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A person’s fitness level in childhood seems to influence certain measures of their health as young adults, new study findings suggest.

The study followed Norwegian students and found that those who were more physically fit at age 13 were less likely to become obese or have elevated blood pressure in early adulthood.

By the age of 40, however, that effect had faded, the researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.

The findings, they say, indicate that childhood fitness may have an impact on later health, but adults still need to keep up their fitness levels as they age.

As people move into middle-age, other factors intervene to affect their health, so their fitness during their youth may become less and less important. “And this suggests that it’s important to keep up the good habits, like being active, also into middle-age,” lead researcher Dr. Elisabeth Kvaavik, of the University of Oslo in Norway, told Reuters Health.

She and her colleagues based their findings on 1,016 men and women who’d been followed since 1979, when they were 13 years old, on average. At that time, they’d been questioned about their exercise habits and had their fitness measured during testing on a stationary bike.

In general, the study found that the more fit participants were at age 13, the less likely they were to be obese or have elevated blood pressure in their 20s and early-30s.

There was no clear link between childhood exercise levels and adulthood health measures. However, Kvaavik said this is not surprising since the methods used to measure exercise levels — namely, questionnaires — are much less precise than the objective tests that measure a person’s actual cardiovascular fitness.

Fitness is not only a matter of exercise habits; genes play some role, for example. Nonetheless, since fitness is at least partly a reflection of physical activity, Kvaavik said, children who exercise regularly may help protect themselves from obesity and elevated blood pressure in early adulthood.

SOURCE: CANADA.COM

Jan. 20, 2009 — There has been an “alarming rise” in antibiotic-resistant head and neck infections in young children in recent years, researchers from Emory University in Atlanta report.

Specifically, researchers say more and more elementary school-aged children are developing Staphylococcus aureus (”staph,” or S. aureus) infections that do not respond to the antibiotic methicillin. The bacteria responsible for such infections are called MRSA (for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). MRSA is a common culprit in head and neck infections, and doctors believe it’s responsible for almost every skin infection.

Before the 1980s, most MRSA infections occurred in patients who were hospitalized. But in the past decade, the bacteria have become more common in crowded community environments, such as nursing homes and prisons, and among those with no known risk factors, according to information in the journal article.

“In recent years, there have been increasing reports of community-acquired MRSA infections in children,” the authors write in the journal report.

For the study, Iman Naseri, MD, and colleagues from Emory’s department of otolaryngology reviewed pediatric head and neck infection records from more than 300 hospitals in the U.S. between 2001 and 2006.

Over the six-year period, MRSA head and neck infections in children jumped from 12% of all S. aureus infections in the study in 2001 to 28% in 2006. The average age of the children was about 6 1/2. Most MRSA head and neck infections occurred in the ears (34%), followed by the nose and sinuses (28.3%) and the throat and neck (14.2%).

The findings, published in the January issue of Archives of Otolaryngology — Head & Neck Surgery, have prompted a call for more cautious use of antibiotics. According to the FDA, increasing use of antibiotics plays a large role in the development of antibiotic resistance. The U.S. government calls antibiotic resistance a major public health threat.

“Judicious use of antibiotic agents and increased effectiveness in diagnosis and treatment are warranted to reduce further antimicrobial drug resistance in pediatric head and neck infections,” Naseri’s team writes.

The authors say their results “depict an alarming increase in MRSA in the United States.” They encourage more rapid testing of suspected head and neck infections so that caregivers may prescribe the appropriate antibiotic treatment immediately. Using the wrong antibiotics or using antibiotics to treat a viral infection (such as a cold) can lead to further drug resistance, according to the FDA.

SOURCE: WebMD.Com