CHICAGO —Diabetic children who spent the most time glued to the TV had a tougher time controlling their blood sugar, according to a Norwegian study that illustrates yet another downside of too much television.

The findings, based on a study of children with , lend support to the http://www.aap.org/ advice that children watch no more than two hours of TV daily, said lead author Dr. Hanna Margeirsdottir of the http://www.uio.no/english/.

Type 1 diabetes is the less common form of the disease and used to be called juvenile diabetes. It is not related to obesity and is caused when the body cannot make insulin, which converts sugar from food into energy. People with Type 1 must take insulin daily and regulate their blood-sugar levels.

Snacking and overeating can increase blood-sugar levels; physical activity can lower them. While TV-viewing is often accompanied by snacking, the researchers didn’t examine diet or physical activity.

The study results “suggest that encouraging children with Type 1 diabetes to watch less television may be important for improved blood glucose control and better health outcomes,” the study authors wrote.

Other experts said the study also might suggest something else. Diabetic children who already have consistently high blood-sugar levels could feel too sick to do much besides watch TV, said Jill Weissburg-Benchell, a psychologist and diabetes educator at http://www.childrensmemorial.org/.

“It’s very clear that there is a relationship. Now the question is what underlies that relationship,” she said.

Results of the Oslo research will appear in the June edition of the journal http://care.diabetesjournals.org/.

The study involved 538 children with an average age of 13. In Norway, about 25,000 people have Type 1 diabetes. In the United States, there are 3 million with the condition and about 30 million worldwide.

The study evaluated results of a routine test that measured average blood-sugar control over three months. There was a continuous increase in the level of blood sugar with every hour of TV watched, rising to the highest level for those who watched at least four hours daily.

The results didn’t surprise Chicago diabetes educator Monica Joyce, who founded a basketball camp for diabetic children.

Campers typically are asked how much TV they watch and are taught “they can get much better blood sugars if they’re active,” Joyce said.

If the researchers’ theory is right, then turning off the TV could be added to a list of remedies “that are very low-cost to the health care system,” said Dr. Francine Kaufman, head of a diabetes program at http://www.childrenshospitalla.org/.

“This has got to be the social norm that it’s just not acceptable for kids to be baby-sat by TV,” she said.

The government’s own preliminary evaluation of the diabetes pill confirms the heart risks reported in a study earlier this week and suggests that as many as 60,000 to 100,000 heart attacks might be linked to its use since it came on the market eight years ago, a leading member of Congress said Thursday.

In a floor statement placed in the Senate record, Sen. Charles Grassley also said that safety watchdogs within the federal http://www.fda.gov/ “several months ago” recommended a “black box” on the drug’s label ? the strongest possible warning.

It is the first confirmation that the FDA’s own analysis of Avandia shows a similar magnitude of heart attack risks ? dangers that were first publicly raised in a medical journal report published earlier this week.

Grassley complained that FDA higher-ups have said they want to wait for results of an ongoing study that will not be available for two more years before making a decision.

“That’s a long time from now when you have millions of Americans taking this drug,” said the statement by the Iowa Republican. “Those numbers seem like a high enough threshold to me for the FDA to warn the American people of the possibility of a problem.”

The FDA has been under fire since Monday’s report came out, attacked by consumer advocates for dropping the ball on drug safety and for taking no stronger action in light of the new warning signs.

Avandia, sold by the British company http://www.gsk.com/, is a blockbuster medication used to treat , the most common form of the disease. More than 6 million people worldwide have taken the drug, whose U.S. sales topped $2.2 billion last year.

On Monday, an analysis led by Cleveland Clinic cardiology chief Dr. Steven Nissen of 42 separate studies on Avandia concluded that it raised the risk of heart attacks by 43 percent, compared to the rates among people taking no or other diabetes drugs. The analysis also indicated that Avandia might increase the risk of heart-related deaths.

GlaxoSmithKline strongly disputes the conclusions. Company officials said that while their own similar analysis suggested a 31 percent greater risk ? information it shared with the FDA as early as 2005 ? more rigorous, albeit smaller, individual studies did not show that.

Critics have accused the FDA of being lax in monitoring drug safety, and some members of Congress scheduled hearings and have subpoenaed key people to appear.

Grassley’s staff has been meeting with FDA staffers and others and gathering documents all week to investigate the issue, said Jill Kozeny, press officer for the Senate Finance Committee, of which Grassley is ranking member.

FDA spokeswoman Julie Zawisza confirmed Thursday the internal analysis that Grassley’s statement revealed, but added, “we have conflicting data” from individual studies, and therefore “are continuing to review the results of GSK’s ongoing trial to determine the actual risk.”

She said she could not discuss “ongoing regulatory matters” like the black box warning that Grassley’s statement says was urged months ago by the FDA’s Division of Drug Risk Evaluation.

As for the number of heart attacks possibly linked to the drug ? as many as 20 a day, Grassley contends ? Zawisza said: “A relationship between the drug and these deaths has not been established. We don’t have data to support such a conclusion.”

Any increase in heart attack risk is especially worrisome for diabetics because two-thirds of them die of heart problems.

About 1 million Americans are currently taking Avandia, which costs from $90 to $170 for a one-month supply. The FDA and diabetes experts are advising users of the medication to talk to their doctors and not to immediately discontinue the drug, which helps keep blood-sugar levels under control.

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On the Net:

New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org/

GlaxoSmithKline: http://www.gsk.com/

Food and Drug Administration: http://www.fda.gov/

Diabetes information: http://www.diabetes.org/

and http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/

New Jersey would become the first state to require both pregnant women and newborns to be tested for HIV under a proposal introduced by the Senate president.

The bill would require all pregnant women be tested for HIV twice, once early in the pregnancy and a second time in the third trimester. Every birthing facility in the state would have to test all newborns in their care.

Senate President Richard J. Codey introduced the legislation on Thursday, which he described as a “no brainer.”

“The key in the fight against HIV and AIDS is early detection and treatment,” said Codey said Friday. “For newborns this can be a lifesaving measure.”

Codey, D-Essex, said the bill stems from a report that found medical treatment during pregnancy can dramatically cut mother-to-child HIV transmission.

, a Washington, D.C.-based feminist advocacy organization, opposes mandatory HIV testing, arguing it violates a woman’s right to make their own childbearing and medical treatment decisions.

Current New Jersey law requires providers only to offer HIV testing to pregnant women.

According to the Kaiser Foundation, a nonprofit research organization focusing on U.S. health care issues, four states ? Arkansas, Michigan, Tennessee and Texas ? require health care providers to test a mother for , unless the mother specifically asks not to be tested.

Connecticut and New York are the only states that test all newborns for HIV, according to the foundation.

New Jersey has some of the highest rates in the nation for cases, women with AIDS and pediatric HIV and AIDS cases, according to the foundation.

Codey’s bill will be scheduled for hearings in the coming weeks. To become law, it must be approved by both the state Senate and Assembly, and then signed by the governor.

(CBS)Many experts claim that too much television isn’t good for kids they should read books or play outside instead.

Now two new studies in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine say that many very young children are watching TV regularly and teens who watch too much TV are more likely to be poor students.

The first study finds that 40 percent of infants are regular TV watchers by the time they are 3 months old. By the time they are 2 years old, 90 percent of children regularly watch TV. In most cases, it doesn’t seem to be a matter of parents using the TV as a surrogate babysitter, but rather parents truly believe that shows aimed at tots will somehow expand their minds, language skills and cognitive abilities, the study found.

“It’s easy to assume that many parents are so occupied by chores, or attention they need to pay to their other kids, that they turn the TV into a second babysitter,” The Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay said. “But that’s not what the numbers show.”

Yet studies have never proved that television shows help a child learn.

“There’s no hard evidence one way or the other for kids so young, but the American Academy of Pediatrics has made its expert opinion clear,” Dr. Senay said. “It urges parents to discourage TV viewing for children younger than 2. The Academy says it’s much better for a child’s development to talk to the child, or to play sing and read together. It also says even when they’re older, kids should not have televisions in their bedrooms.”

The second study found that 14-year-olds who watch more than three hours of TV a day are far more likely to have a negative attitude toward school, skip homework and to have trouble paying attention than kids who watch one hour or less a day. In turn, kids in that group are less likely to go to college.

“That study surveyed more than 600 families with grown children … and the association with bad outcomes appeared to be profound,” Dr. Senay said. “However, the study found that many kids who drastically cut their television viewing had sharp turnarounds for the better.”

But Dr. Senay said that the damage can be undone. If the children who watch more than three hours of television drastically cut their viewing time, they greatly improve their chances of going to college.

“That’s a good indication that parents who clamp down on the TV viewing or maybe even better teenagers who realize they’re watching too much and cut back the hours on their own, can really improve academic performance,” Dr. Senay said. “And given the vast differences in the job market between college graduates and people who didn’t get past high school, the lead researcher says the decision to cut back before it’s too late can ultimately have a profound effect on a young person’s life.”

The House on Wednesday failed to override the veto of a $124.2 billion supplemental appropriations bill for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that included funds for a number of http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?hint=3&DR_ID=44642, the AP/Houston Chronicle reports. The House voted 222-203 to override the veto but fell 62 votes short of the required two-thirds majority (Espo, AP/Houston Chronicle, 5/3). President Bush on Tuesday vetoed the legislation because of opposition to provisions that called for the withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Iraq by March 2008 (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 5/2).

Negotiations on New Bill
In a meeting with Bush on Wednesday, Democratic congressional leaders agreed to exclude domestic spending provisions from a new version of the supplemental appropriations bill until they can reach an agreement with the White House on provisions related to the war in Iraq. Bush has opposed the inclusion of the domestic spending provisions in the legislation. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said, “I said to the president that it’s very clear that the No. 1 issue is Iraq — don’t talk about the other things in this emergency spending bill. Iraq is the issue we must be concerned about.”

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) said that lawmakers will discuss the domestic spending provisions later in negotiations with the White House (Ferrechio, CQ Today, 5/2). According to CQ Today, “Democrats have said they are ready to fight” for the inclusion of the domestic spending provisions in the bill (Ferrechio/Clark, CQ Today, 5/2). House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that Congress should approve the legislation by Memorial Day (Koffler, CongressDaily, 5/3).

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