By Robert Preidt

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Oct. 30, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Safety concerns are a main reason American parents hesitate to have their children vaccinated against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV), according to a new study.

The finding challenges a common reason given by doctors for not recommending the vaccine more forcefully -- that parents are concerned the vaccination will lead to greater sexual activity among children.

The vaccine protects against the HPV virus, which can cause cancers of the cervix, vagina, vulva, mouth and anus. Despite recommendations to include the HPV vaccine in routine childhood vaccinations, its use remains low in the United States.

The study findings appear in the November issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"We wanted to better understand why parents choose not to vaccinate their children against HPV, since that information is critical for developing improved public health campaigns and provider messages to increase vaccination rates," study author Anne Rositch said in a journal news release. She's an assistant professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore.

The findings show that public health campaigns should focus on persistent concerns about the safety and necessity of the vaccine for both boys and girls, the researchers said.

"We think all physicians need to be champions of this vaccine that has the potential to prevent tens of thousands of cases of cancers each year," said study co-author Dr. Anna Beavis, an assistant professor of gynecology and obstetrics at Hopkins. "Providing a strong recommendation is a powerful way to improve vaccination rates."

The study looked at data from a series of surveys on vaccine usage conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between 2010 and 2016. Thousands of parents of teens ages 13 to 17 were asked if their children had had the vaccine, if they planned to get it and, if not, why.

Among parents of girls in the most recent survey, 22 percent cited safety as the reason for not having their daughters vaccinated against HPV. One in 5 parents withheld the vaccine because they didn't think it was necessary. Thirteen percent didn't have enough knowledge about HPV; 10 percent said their doctor hadn't recommended it, and 10 percent cited their child's lack of sexual activity.

Among parents of boys, the chief reasons for not having their sons vaccinated against HPV were: lack of necessity (22 percent); followed by no doctor recommendation (17 percent), and lack of knowledge (14 percent).

Fourteen percent of parents of boys mentioned safety concerns, 9 percent cited their son's lack of sexual activity, and 2 percent said gender was the reason.

In 2016, only 50 percent of eligible females and 38 percent of eligible males had completed the HPV vaccine series, according to background notes with the study.

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Oct. 30, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Trick-or-treating is a Halloween tradition that can quickly turn disastrous, with new research showing a more than 40 percent spike in pedestrian deaths on the spooky holiday.

Kids wearing dark costumes, zigzagging across streets and popping out between parked cars are potentially tragic targets for drivers rushing home after work, explained study author Dr. Donald Redelmeier. He is a researcher at the University of Toronto's Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.

"On Halloween, there is a 43 percent increased risk of a pedestrian death -- about four extra children are killed trick-or-treating," he said.

More boys than girls are killed, Redelmeier said. That's because boys often wear dark costumes -- "pedestrian ninjas," he calls them.

The time when most deaths occurred was 6 p.m. That's when the really young kids are out and some folks are rushing home from work, he explained.

Children between the ages of 4 and 8 had the highest risk of being accidentally struck by a vehicle, the findings showed, and a lot more children are injured than killed.

"Our study only looked at deaths," Redelmeier said. "For every child who dies, there's probably one or two dozen children who are run over, survive, but are left with all sorts of disabilities."

But all these deaths and injuries could be prevented, he added.

Here's a few quick tips to follow:

• Look both ways before crossing the street.
• Don't get distracted by your smartphone.
• Instead of crisscrossing streets, go to houses on one side, and then the other -- so you're only crossing the street once.
• Have reflectors or flashing lights on your kids' costumes.
• Worry a lot more about road safety and a lot less about hidden dangers like razorblades in your child's candy bag.
• Drivers need to slow down in residential neighborhoods.

Dr. Barbara Pena, research director of the emergency medicine department at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami, said she sees more injuries on Halloween.

"We see big increases in trauma because all these kids are walking around in dark costumes at night," Pena said. "We always have to stack the emergency department with extra people because we see a jump in injuries."

Pena also thinks that communities can help by closing streets so kids can trick-or-treat safely. In addition, parents need to keep a tight leash on their kids to prevent accidents and deaths.

Using data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Redelmeier and his colleagues looked at the number of pedestrian deaths on Oct. 31, from 1975 to 2016. They focused on the hours between 5 p.m. and midnight.

The investigators compared these deaths with those occurring during the same time period on Oct. 24 and Nov. 7.

Over 42 years, 608 pedestrians died on the 42 Halloween evenings, while 851 died on the 84 other evenings used for comparison.

The absolute death rates averaged 2.07 per hour on Halloween and 1.45 on other evenings, the researchers found.

The absolute risk of pedestrian deaths per 100 million Americans was small, Redelmeier's team noted. And that rate dropped from 5 to less than 3 deaths per 100 million Americans during the years between 1975 and 2016.

According to Maureen Vogel, a spokeswoman for the National Safety Council, "There's no reason to keep kids from trick-or-treating. There's just more reason, in light of this study and others, to be aware of your surroundings and exercise caution."

The report was published online Oct. 30 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

TUESDAY, Oct. 30, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Teens who stop smoking pot can think and learn better afterward, even if they are only light users, a new study reports.

Compared to teenagers and young adults who continued using marijuana, those who abstained for a month displayed a "modest but reliable improvement in their ability to learn," said lead researcher Randi Schuster.

"Most of this improvement surprisingly happens rather quickly, within the first week of abstinence," added Schuster, director of neuropsychology at Massachusetts General Hospital's Center for Addiction Medicine.

The results show that kids need to be kept from using pot, Schuster said. This is a growing concern as recreational marijuana becomes legal in more U.S. states, she added.

"As we as a country move toward widespread legalization, we should pay attention to smart prevention programming for children," Schuster said.

The researchers cited a 2016 survey that found almost 14 percent of middle and high school students had used pot in the prior month. It also showed daily use doubling between eighth and 12th grades.

Maturation of critical parts of the brain occurs in adolescence, and regular pot use in those years may cause more harm than later use, the researchers said in background notes.

Marijuana legalization proponents countered that the new study supports their contention that the effects of pot are temporary.

"These conclusions are consistent with those of prior studies finding that cannabis exposure is not likely to be associated with any sort of permanent adverse impact on the brain or cognitive performance," said Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML.

"These findings dispute the long-standing 'stoner-stupid' stereotype and should help to assuage fears that cannabis' acute effects on behavior may persist long after drug ingestion, or that they may pose greater potential risks to the developing brain," Armentano said.

For their study, Schuster and her colleagues asked two-thirds of a group of 88 marijuana users ages 16 to 25 to drop pot for a month.

The Boston-area participants were not all heavy users, but did use regularly. "We have kids using a minimum of one day a week or more," Schuster said.