An observational study among 2,272 mother-child pairs in Finland found that infants had 44% lower odds of developing food allergies at 12 months if their mother consumed fresh avocado during pregnancy, after adjusting for other lifestyle, delivery, and maternal health factors. Decades of research have explored the relationship between maternal diet and allergic outcomes in infants, but this is the first published study to link avocados in the maternal diet to a lower risk of infant food allergies.

A University of California, Riverside-led research team has adapted an intervention for childhood obesity prevention to better serve Latina mothers, non-maternal caregivers, and families of low-income backgrounds in Inland Southern California. The study could make significant contributions to public health by ensuring that early childhood obesity prevention strategies begin in infancy with infant feeding and are culturally and linguistically relevant for immigrant communities.

Scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) have developed a lactation pad equipped with sensing technology that allows parents of newborns to monitor breast milk in real time. Publishing in the Cell Press journal Device on May 7, their work shows that the device is capable of ensuring that breast milk contains safe levels of the painkiller acetaminophen, which is often prescribed after childbirth and can be transferred to breastfeeding infants. 

An artificial intelligence (AI) model improved outcomes in hospitalized patients by quadrupling the rate of detection and treatment of delirium. The model identifies patients at high risk for delirium and alerts a specially-trained team to assess the patient and create a treatment plan, if needed. The model, developed by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has been integrated into hospital operations, helping health care providers identify and manage delirium, a condition that can affect up to one-third of hospitalized patients. The study, the first to show that an AI-powered delirium risk assignment model can not only perform well in a laboratory setting but also deliver real-world benefits in clinical practice, was published in the May 7, 2025 online issue of JAMA Network Open [https://doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.8874]. 

The virus that causes COVID-19 arrived in Wuhan, China from its place of origin too quickly for its horseshoe bat hosts to have carried it there — a dispersal pattern consistent with that of the virus that caused the 2002 SARS pandemic, according to a new study.