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Mothers who use their smartphones and tablets at the dinner table are less likely to interact with their kids, a new study finds. Researchers videotaped 225 mother-and-child pairs at the dinner table. The children were all 6 years old. Sometimes they ate familiar foods. At other times, the children were introduced to new foods. This can be stressful for young children. On average, mothers who used mobile devices during dinner talked to their children 20% less often than mothers who did not use them. They interacted in other ways 39% less often. When introducing new foods, mothers using mobile devices talked to their children 26% less often than non-users. They had 48% fewer interactions of other types. The journal Academic Pediatrics published the study online. HealthDay News wrote about it December 12.

In early testing, a new compound appeared to help reduce weight gain, researchers said. The compound contains propionate. This is a fatty acid that is created when fiber breaks down in the colon. Among other things, propionate appears to play a role in suppressing appetite. Researchers created a compound of propionate and inulin, a plant fiber.  Twenty healthy volunteers were randomly assigned to drink either this compound or inulin alone in fruit juice. Then they were told to eat as much as they wanted from a buffet. People who got the propionate compound ate about 14% less than the other group. The next phase of the study lasted 24 weeks. This time, people 60 overweight adults were assigned to receive either the propionate compound or inulin.  In all, 49 completed the study. Of the 25 who took the compound, 1 person gained more than 3% of body weight.

Gout attacks are more than twice as likely to occur overnight as during the day or evening, a new study shows. It confirms a finding that many doctors and patients had observed. The study kept track of 724 people with gout for a year. They recorded the date and hour of gout attacks. They described their symptoms and listed their medicines. Drinking alcohol, eating some foods or taking some medicines have been linked with gout attacks. People in the study also included whether they had done any of these things in the 24 to 48 hours before the attack. A total of 1,433 gout attacks occurred. About half of those, 733, were between midnight and 8 a.m. Another 310 occurred between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and 390 between 5 p.m. and midnight.  Therefore, gout attacks were 2.4 times as likely to occur at night as during the daytime.

The proportion of children under age 5 getting flu vaccine each year increased sharply after the vaccine was recommended for all children, a study shows. But more than half of the children still were not getting the vaccine. The study focused on children ages 6 months to 59 months in a Tennessee county. In the flu season that started in 2000, about 6% of this group got the vaccine. In 2010, that increased to 38%. Hospital stays and emergency room visits varied greatly from year to year. Overall, the number of hospital stays for flu per 10,000 children declined. But when researchers excluded the peak year of 2003-2004, this trend was small enough that it could have been caused by chance. The number of emergency room visits tended to go up. The authors said neither of these trends was clearly related to increases in vaccination. The journal Pediatrics published the study December 8.

Many older women get up often at night to use the bathroom, a study suggests. That could be just because they drank too many liquids in the evening, the authors say. But it also could be a sign of a medical problem. Researchers surveyed about 2,000 women. All were 40 or older. One-third said they usually went to the bathroom at least twice a night. This is called nocturia. It can be a symptom of a urinary tract disorder. But about 40% of the women reported no other symptoms, such as urine leakage or an overactive bladder during the day. The chance of having nocturia rose 21% for every 5-year increase in age. Night bathroom trips also were more common among women who had had a hysterectomy, had hot flashes or used vaginal estrogen to treat menopause symptoms. Only one-quarter of the women were even “moderately” bothered by their nocturia.