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The teen birth rate is falling, and drug use among eighth graders is rising, a new report says. The report is called “America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2011.” It puts together statistics from many government sources. Births among girls 15 to 17 fell for the second year. They were 21.7 per 1,000 girls in 2008. That dropped to 20.1 in 2009. That same year, 8% of eighth graders said they had used illicit drugs in the last month. This increased to 10% in 2010. In the late 1970s, about 6% of children age 6 and up were obese. That increased to 19% in 2007-2008. More children also are living in poverty and poor housing, the report says. Fewer live with a parent who is employed full-time. Asthma rates rose from 8.8% of children in 2001 to 9.6% in 2009. Reuters Health news service and HealthDay News wrote about the report July 6.

At least 20% of adults are obese in every state except Colorado, says a new report released this week. That’s up dramatically in the last 15 years. In 1995, no state had an obesity rate that high. The new report came from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It used numbers from 2010. Mississippi topped the list. About 34.4% of adults there are obese. In 2006, it was the only state where obesity topped 30%. Now a dozen states have passed that threshold. Most of them are in the South. Colorado was the leanest state. The obesity rate there was 19.8%. Race and education also affected the numbers. Obesity was 40% among African-Americans in 15 states. Among whites, it passed 30% in only 4 states. About one-third of those who did not graduate from high school were obese. That’s much higher than the rate among college graduates.

Children who have delays in talking at age 2 don’t have an increased risk of social problems later on, a study finds. The study included more than 1,600 children. Their caregivers were asked to fill out surveys about the children. They answered the surveys when the children were 2 and every few years afterward. The surveys showed that 142 children had delays in learning to talk at age 2. These children were more likely to have problems with emotions and behavior than other kids at that time. But they did not have more problems than other kids later on. The journal Pediatrics published the study online July 4. HealthDay News wrote about it.

Massage may relieve back pain better than medicine or physical therapy, new research suggests. The study included 401 people with long-lasting low back pain. They were randomly divided into 3 groups. One group received “usual care.” This included as medicines and physical therapy. The other 2 groups received massage an hour a week for 10 weeks. One group received structural massage. This kind of massage focuses on pain-related back muscles and ligaments. The other group got relaxation massage, also called Swedish massage. This type aims for overall body relaxation. After 10 weeks, about 1 out of 3 people who received massage said their pain was much better or gone. Only 1 out of 25 in the usual-care group reported this result. People who got massage also tended to use less medicine than the usual-care group. They were more active and spent fewer days in bed.

A baby’s experience in the womb, including drugs the mother takes, might affect autism risk, two studies suggest. One study looked at two groups of women. One group had children with autism. Children of women in the other group did not have the condition. Women in the first group were twice as likely as the others to have taken antidepressant drugs during pregnancy. These drugs were in a group called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). But any link would be a limited one, researchers said. More than 93% of the women whose children had autism did not take antidepressants while pregnant. Untreated depression can also cause risk for both mother and baby. The journal Archives of General Psychiatry published the study July 5. The same issue also included a study of 192 sets of twins. At least one twin in each pair had autism.