Study: Eating nuts daily during pregnancy may up child’s asthma risk
Pregnant women who eat nuts daily may have children twice as likely to develop asthma, according to a study in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Dutch researchers analyzed data from diet questionnaires completed by nearly 4,000 pregnant women and then followed their children for eight years. They examined the effect of eating different types of nuts, including peanuts. When compared with women who rarely ate nuts, women who ate nuts every day during pregnancy seemed to have an increased risk of having a child who had asthma symptoms, wheezed or used steroids. The research also found lower asthma rates among children whose mothers ate more fruit during pregnancy.

• Refer Council on Ethical Judicial Affairs Report 1 on industry support of professional education in medicine.
• Establish new policy that articulates the AMA’s commitment to ensuring that as our health care delivery system evolves, direct and meaningful physician input is present at every level of debate.
• Adopt policy asking for appropriate financial and other incentives to help physicians use electronic prescribing, and for the removal of barriers that keep doctors from using it.
• Continue its strong opposition to non-payment for conditions outlined in the Hospital Acquired Condition – Present on Admission (HAC-POA) law that are not reasonably preventable through the application of evidence-based guidelines.
• Adopt policy to recognize that insufficient evidence exists to specifically restrict the use of high fructose corn syrup or other fructose-containing sweeteners in the food supply, or to require the use of warning labels on products containing high fructose corn syrup.
• Adopt policy that asks the AMA Council on Science and Public Health to undertake a review of “anti-aging” medications, their efficacy, benefits and risks.
• Convene a meeting to discuss medical education efforts on healthy lifestyles for physicians.
• Refer for decision a resolution to consider creating, or partnering to create, a patient safety organization.
• Publish a National Health Insurers Report Card.
• Oppose the National Board of Medical Examiners participating in any examination for Doctors of Nursing Practice.
• Advocate that professionals in a clinical health care setting clearly, accurately identify to patients their qualifications and degrees attained. And that it should be a felony to misrepresent one’s self as a physician.
• Refer for a more comprehensive study the issue of hospital privileges for physicians with low hospital activity.
• Not adopt a resolution asking the FDA to extend the phase-out period for CFC Inhalers.

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Review Questions: Chapter 32 of Pediatric Allergy: Principles & Practices, edited by Donald Y.M. Leung, et al. Review questions were written by Drs. Jennifer W. Mbuthia, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and Gregory Metz, Duke University.