BACKGROUND Season of birth has been associated with the development of atopy and asthma. Relationships among a particular birth season, maternal allergen exposure during the birth season, and childhood development of allergies to allergens in higher concentration during the birth season may be important. OBJECTIVE To investigate the effects of winter birth (January 1 to March 31) and prenatal...

Seasonal influenza vaccine is recommended for all pregnant women because of their increased risk for influenza-associated complications. In addition, receipt of influenza vaccine by women during pregnancy has been shown to protect their infants for several months after birth (1). As part of its case-control surveillance study of medications and birth defects, the Birth Defects Study of the Slon...

BACKGROUND A seasonality of low birth weight (LBW) and preterm birth (PTB) has been described for most regions and there is evidence that this pattern is caused by ambient outdoor temperature. However, the association as such, the direction of effect and the critical time of exposure remain controversial. METHODS Logistic, time-series regression was performed on nearly 300,000 births from two...

On farm monitoring of central highland goats were conducted in Sekota district of the Amhara regional state, Ethiopia to evaluate the growth performances under the traditional management practices. On farm feeding trial was also conducted to see the feeding performances and carcass characteristics of Central Highland goat types. Data used for the study was collected from randomly selected on-fa...

PURPOSE To determine the association of season of birth and refractive error in very young Chinese children in China. METHODS We conducted a population-based study of Chinese children aged 0 to 3 years residing in eastern China. Refraction was determined by non-cyclopegic autorefraction using a hand-held autorefractor. Date of birth was retrieved from birth certificate of the individual subje...

BACKGROUND Reports in the literature suggest that the season of birth might constitute a risk factor for the development of a major psychiatric disorder, possibly because of the effect environmental factors have during the second trimester of gestation. The aim of the current paper was to study the possible relationship of the season of birth and current clinical symptoms in unipolar major depr...

Rotavirus vaccines were introduced in the United States in 2006 and in the subsequent years have fundamentally altered seasonality and shifted disease from annual to biennial epidemics. We investigated whether season and year of birth have emerged as risk factors for rotavirus and affected vaccine performance. We constructed a retrospective birth cohort of US children <5 years using the 2001-20...

BACKGROUND Several studies have demonstrated an increased risk of congenital hypothyroidism (CH) in girls in comparison to boys. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to determine the potential interactions that are able to change the effect of gender on congenital hypothyroidism. PATIENTS AND METHODS We conducted a matched 1:4 case-control study in Hamadan Province, western of Iran, from 20...

BACKGROUND In this study, 2 main hypotheses have been put forward to explain the variation in childhood intelligence or school performance by season of birth. In the first hypothesis, it is suggested that it is due to school policy concerning school entry, whereas the second suggests that a seasonally patterned exposure such as temperature, maternal nutrition, or infection during critical perio...

OBJECTIVES To determine risk factors for GBS colonisation in Gambian mothers and in their infants from birth to day 60-89 of age. METHODS Swabs and breastmilk from mothers/infant pairs were collected and cultured on selective agar. Negative samples were analysed for GBS DNA via real-time PCR. Positive isolates were serotyped using multiplex PCR and gel-agarose electrophoresis. RESULTS Seven...