Wednesday, April 7, 2010 as of 11:14 AM ET
Otitis is a general term for inflammation or infection of the ear, in both humans and other animals.
Read More at Wikipedia ›Lacey-Mae Mason, who will be featured on Wednesday night's episode of the popular TLC show Toddlers & Tiaras , has been making the rounds in the pageant circuit since she was 14 months old.
Now, at 8 years old and standing at about 3 feet, 4 in., there's something that clearly sets Lacey apart from other contestants her age – besides her incredible stage presence. Lacey, from Brooklyn, Conn., was born with achondroplasia, the leading cause of dwarfism. Achondroplasia occurs when a person inherits a mutated copy of the gene associated with the disorder from either the mother or the father. The condition affects one out of every 15,000 to 40,000 births. About 80 percent of people with the disorder are born to two normal-sized parents. In Lacey's case, doctors were not aware of her condition until the day she was born, when her mother Kerry Ann Mason had to undergo a cesarean section."With Lacey, her head is a bit larger," Mason explained. "So we had to do it that way."In addition ...Women should breastfeed their newborns exclusively for about the first six months of life, after which some foods can be added along with continued breastfeeding, ac...
A new government study reports that while fewer kids and teens are getting exposed to secondhand smoke while riding in the car, rates of exposure are still high enou...
Watching your children get a vaccine may be even more painful for you than for them. However, these vaccines can help prevent a wide range of diseases, of which chil...
Strep throat, also known as streptococcal pharyngitis, is the most common bacterial throat infection, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Because m...
Ear infections , runny noses, colds and hernias are all common ailments among young children. But for Jason and Justin Leider of Elmwood Park, N.J., these were signs...
Children living with people who smoke indoors miss more school than their classmates living in smoke-free households, a study out Monday shows.Researchers at Massach...
Pediatricians write more than 10 million unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions—for conditions like the flu and asthma—every year, suggests a new study.Those ailments,...
Use of medications to suppress stomach acid in infants has skyrocketed, but the trend is neither based in science nor beneficial to babies, a commentary suggests.Adv...
Children in day care fall sick more often than children cared for at home but will grow up to be healthier than their non-day care classmates at school, according to...
The push to get pediatricians to stop prescribing antibiotics for the wrong illnesses is paying off a bit, a new government report found.Since the early 1990s, there...
Mothers who breastfeed for the recommended amount of time may have a somewhat lower risk of developing high blood pressure later on, new research suggests.The findin...
Hand, foot and mouth disease; fifth disease; scarlet fever; whooping cough – all of these conditions sound pretty scary, and the truth is, any kid can get them, espe...
They are common items found in a household with a newborn child – baby bottles, pacifiers and sippy cups. Most small children interact with these products every day...
More than half of the children who took part in a study on exposure to cigarette smoke tested positive for such exposure, despite only a handful of their parents adm...
Kids whose parents smoke are more likely to get ear infections and have hearing problems, according to a new review paper.When moms lit up, kids were also almost twi...
The benefits of treating kids' ear infections with antibiotics may not always outweigh the costs in side effects and dollars spent, suggests a new review of more tha...
Taking probiotics on top of a course of antibiotics may help ward off the diarrhea that often comes along with antibiotic treatment, a new review of past studies sug...
They are certainly the most common reason parents bring their kids to the doctor, but ear infections in young children are on the decline – and researchers think it ...
Autism is not necessarily a fixed life sentence, but rather a condition that can be improved, according to Dr. Martha Herbert, a neurology professor at Harvard Medic...