Teenagers growing up more slowly today than they used to

Dear parents, if you want your children to have proper sleep, read this carefully. Joining a growing list of studies that tell parents to shun devices at bed-time, researchers say that children who use devices and decide what time they go to sleep, achieve less sleep and feel more sleepier the following day than their peers.

The study of children in this age-group (aged 11 to 13 years), published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, found most (72 per cent) of the 163 students interviewed by University of Otago researchers achieved recommended guidelines of an average 9 to 11 hours sleep nightly over one week.

"But that also means that almost one in four students did not achieve sleep within these guidelines, which highlights an area for improvement," said study researcher Kate Ford.

However, consistent with previous research in 15 to 17-year-old New Zealanders, the study results show less sleep on the nights where devices are used in the hour before bed.

According to the researchers, students who used devices before going to sleep were also more likely to report that they felt sleepy the following morning. Watching television before bed had no significant effect on sleep length.

There were also some interesting observations over the weekends where students went to bed later but woke later achieving similar sleep length to the school days, the researchers said.

A small group of students (six per cent) who reported less than seven hours of sleep, including a small number reporting not sleeping at all, according to the study,

Therefore, while the average across the week of 72 per cent of students reporting adequate sleep is reassuring, it is far from the goal of every child achieving sleep within the recommended guidelines," Ford said.

Dr Paul Kelly, head of the Sleep Health Service at Canterbury District Health Board, supervised the study and explained that the foundations for good health are based on proper nutrition, regular exercise and good sleep quality.

Sleep quality is often overlooked as a contributory factor to poor health.

"The study findings suggest the need for parental guidance around bedtimings and moderation of the use and availability of electronic devices before bed," Kelly said.

"Respect and protect your sleep, as good daytime functioning is reliant on adequate sleep," Kelly added.

The World Health Organisation has warned that the COVID-19 pandemic is entering a "new and dangerous" phase. Thursday saw the most cases in a single day reported to the WHO.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the day had seen 150,000 new cases with half of those coming from the Americas and large numbers also from the Middle East and South Asia, the BBC reported.

He said the virus was still spreading fast and the pandemic accelerating.

He acknowledged people might be fed up with self-isolating and countries were eager to open their economies but he said that now was a time for extreme vigilance.

Maria van Kerkhove, technical lead of the WHO's COVID-19 response, told a press conference the pandemic is "accelerating in many parts of the world".

"While we have seen countries have some success in suppressing transmission and bringing transition down to a low level, every country must remain ready," she said.

Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said that some countries had managed to flatten the peak of infections without bringing them down to a very low level.

"You can see a situation in some countries where they could get a second peak now, because the disease has not been brought under control," he said.

"The disease will then go away and reduce to a low level, and they could then get a second wave again in the autumn or later in the year."

Taking multiple courses of antibiotics within a short span of time may do people more harm than good, suggests new research which discovered an association between the number of prescriptions for antibiotics and a higher risk of hospital admissions.

Patients who have had 9 or more antibiotic prescriptions for common infections in the previous three years are 2.26 times more likely to go to hospital with another infection in three or more months, said the researchers.

Patients who had two antibiotic prescriptions were 1.23 times more likely, patients who had three to four prescriptions 1.33 times more likely and patients who had five to eight 1.77 times more likely to go to hospital with another infection.

"We don't know why this is, but overuse of antibiotics might kill the good bacteria in the gut (microbiota) and make us more susceptible to infections, for example," said Professor Tjeerd van Staa from the University of Manchester in Britain.

The study, published in the journal BMC Medicine, is based on the data of two million patients in England and Wales.

The patient records, from 2000 to 2016, covered common infections such as upper respiratory tract, urinary tract, ear and chest infections and excluded long term conditions such as cystic fibrosis and chronic lung disease.

The risks of going to hospital with another infection were related to the number of the antibiotic prescriptions in the previous three years.

A course is defined by the team as being given over a period of one or two weeks.

"GPs (general physicians) care about their patients, and over recent years have worked hard to reduce the prescribing of antibiotics,""Staa said.

"But it is clear GPs do not have the tools to prescribe antibiotics effectively for common infections, especially when patients already have previously used antibiotics.

"They may prescribe numerous courses of antibiotics over several years, which according to our study increases the risk of a more serious infection. That in turn, we show, is linked to hospital admissions," Staa added.

It not clear why hospital admissions are linked to higher prescriptions and research is needed to show what or if any biological factors exist, said the research team.

"Our hope is that, however, a tool we are working for GPs, based on patient history, will be able to calculate the risks associated with taking multiple courses of antibiotics," said Francine Jury from the University of Manchester.