We have heard a lot about drug shortages lately, mostly as they relate to the shortage of medicines to treat ADHD.

It turns out that plenty of other medicines are in short supply too.

According to the FDA, there were at least 178 drug shortages in 2010, which is up from 61 drug shortages in 2005. And there were at least 220 drug shortages in 2011.

The number and types of drugs that are in short supply has made this issue grow way beyond having to call around to pharmacies and find your child's Ritalin or Adderall. Some of the drug shortages involve critical drugs to:

• treat cancer
• provide parenteral nutrition
• treat debilitating diseases or conditions

That doctors and hospitals will soon run out of a drug to treat children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a perfect example of how these drug shortages have become such a big problem. The drug, methotrexate, is "an important component of modern treatment for ALL as well as a number of other hematologic malignancies."

Fortunately, something is being done about the drug shortages. President Obama signed an Executive Order directing the FDA to "take steps that will help to prevent and reduce current and future disruptions in the supply of lifesaving medicines." The resulting Interim Final Rule from the FDA will work to ensure "that the FDA and the public receive adequate advance notice of shortages whenever possible," which will hopefully give them time to prevent a shortage.

The Department of Justice is also investigating to see if drug shortages have led to price gouging or stockpiling of important drugs.

Hopefully these steps will help to make sure that no patients miss out on any life-saving drugs.

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FDA Drug Shortages Information

It is a common complaint that kids don't get enough sleep these days.

Surprisingly, it may have always been a complaint, even before the days of kids having TV sets in their rooms, cell phones, and iPods.

A new study that will be published in the March issue of Pediatrics, "Never Enough Sleep: A Brief History of Sleep Recommendations for Children," found that the amount of sleep that kids get decreased by about 0.73 minutes per year since 1897. Surprisingly, the age-specific sleep recommendations also decreased by about 0.71 minutes each year, but was still about 37 minutes greater than however long kids actually slept.

I wouldn't put too much into this though.

Some of the biggest differences were in the earliest studies, from 1897 to 1905, which suggested that toddlers get 16 to 17 hours of sleep. Even then, sleep recommendations for school age children and teens were surprisingly about the same as today.

The study is kind of interesting to read, but shouldn't be used as the basis for any theories for the rise in ADHD or any other condition. As the authors clearly state in their paper, "it is acknowledged that there is almost no empirical evidence for the optimal sleep duration for children," so all of the different recommendations were not necessarily made because any one had better insights into children's sleep habits than another. They could have just taken a survey of how much kids were sleeping and added "an extra allowance based on the assumption that they were not getting enough."

So why would younger kids have been put to sleep earlier 100 years ago? What else were they supposed to do?

When you really look at it, there are so many co-founding factors, how can you directly compare a child born today with one born 115 years and say they would even require the same amount of sleep?

It would be interesting to look at how improved nutrition, protection from infections, and overall improved health, etc., could have caused a decreased need for sleep for infants and toddlers over the years. And how did the implementation of child labor laws, which came under federal regulation for the first time with the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, affect how much sleep kids got or needed?

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In response to the 200,000 who may have been exposed to the person with measles at the Super Bowl Village in Indianapolis last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics is reminding people "of how important it is to maintain high immunization rates against vaccine-preventable diseases."

"Measles spreads so easily that just being in the same room with an infected person can cause an un-immunized person to become infected," states Robert W. Block, MD, FAAP, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. "You simply cannot predict when you or your child will come into contact with someone who has a vaccine-preventable disease. That's why it's so important to make sure your family is vaccinated. We hope that high immunization rates will protect those in the crowd at Indianapolis."

Children should be vaccinated against measles:

• at age 6 months if they will be traveling out of the country
• at age 12 months (routine age for first dose of the MMR vaccine)
• at age 4 to 6 years (routine age for second dose of the MMR vaccine) - or earlier if traveling out of the country

"The vaccine is very effective, which is why we don't see many cases of measles in the U.S. today," said Dr. Block. "But the virus is still out there, and people who are not immunized -- including infants who are too young to be immunized -- are at risk. Measles can be deadly. High rates of immunization in the community help to slow the transmission of diseases like measles, protecting everyone."

There were over 220 cases of measles in the United States last year - the most in 15 years. Let's not see any more records in 2012. Get your kids vaccinated against measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases.

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What's the first thing that you think of when you hear COPPA?

Is it the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, a law that helps protect the personal information of our kids when they go online?

If so, did you know that COPPA is 13 years old, was passed in an internet age before cookies and other tracking technologies were being used, and doesn't cover teens, who frequently use social networking sites, like Facebook?

To help protect our kids from new and emerging health and safety concerns on the internet, the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly supports the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011, which will help to update and strengthen privacy protections for children and teens by:

• better informing users and increasing transparency by explaining what type of information websites collect and what they do with it
• increasing accountability by requiring consent before personal information is collected by websites, either from parents (for younger children) or by teens themselves
• creating a "Digital Marketing Bill of Rights for Teens" that in addition to other things, will create an "Erase Button," so that things teens post don't have to stay online and follow them forever

While no privacy protection law will likely ever be perfect, as kids can enter fake ages when they sign up at websites and too much privacy protection can limit how much kids can take advantage of good things on the internet, the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011 is a good step towards making our kids a little safer online.

Learn more about the Do Not Track Kids Act and urge your representative to become a cosponsor and get it passed. Unlike SOPA and PIPA, which recently got a lot of negative attention, the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011 is a bill with bi-partisan support.

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