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Toddlers that use pacifiers more likely to suffer speech impediments

Preliminary findings by scientists suggest that preschool children who have used a pacifier for at least three years are three times more likely to have speech impediments than children who didn’t use them.

Past studies have shown however that pacifiers can halve the risk of cot death in newborn babies.

The study found that sucking thumbs also increases the risk of delayed speech development.

Scientists used a linguistic test to see whether the children’s speech was normal for their age – or whether they had an unusually low ‘talking age’ when it came to pronouncing sounds and words.

The team found children who sucked their fingers or thumbs, or who used a pacifier for at least three years, were three times more likely to have a problem with their speech.

But those who were breastfed until they were at least nine months old – and therefore not bottlefed – were less likely to have speech impediments.

Dr Clarita Barbosa of the University of Washington who led the team warned that further study with a larger group was necessary. She said: ‘These results suggest extended use of sucking outside of breast-feeding may have detrimental effects on speech development in young children,’.

‘Although results of this study provide further evidence for the benefits of longer duration of breast-feeding of infants, they should be interpreted with caution as these data are observational,’ she added.

In the study of Chilean children, 53 had used a dummy for an average of 11 months while 23 sucked their fingers.

         

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Science Gets Nearer To The Male Birth Control Pill

Science is getting closer to developing a male birth control pill, according to a study published on Monday.

The report featured in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. The thought of birth control for men which uses hormones has caused much debate within the medical community.

Trials have been carried out in China on over 1,000 men who have already fathered one child within the last two years. They have then been injected monthly with testosterone undecanoate (TU) in tea seed oil.

Although sperm production is normally triggered by testosterone, too much of the hormone can cause the testes to shut down.

“If you give external testosterone in the blood, this decreases the testosterone in the testes,” said researcher Dr. John K. Amory, from the University of Washington (Seattle).

“It’s because the body has what we call a feed-back loop. The brain sees the hormones and thinks, ‘Oh, we’re making plenty of that,’ and shuts off [sperm] production.” Amory commented.

The study showed a 95 percent success rate for preventing conception. For men whose sperm levels fell to the expected levels within the first few months of the study, the injections were shown to be 98 percent effective.

Researchers are aiming to get the injections to be 99 percent effective in preventing pregnancy. More long term research is needed to find out how safe the injections are, although the findings are very encouraging.