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Ms. Marsh took Brody, now 6, to an occupational therapist who determined he had a sensory-processing disorder, or SPD, a condition in which the body and brain have difficulty processing and responding to sensory stimuli in the environment. Some people with SPD are hypersensitive to loud noises or different textured foods, for instance; others may be agitated by the touch of a clothing tag. Still other children with SPD may show hardly any response to external stimuli. SPD is believed to affect 5% to 16% of children in the U.S., various studies have found. Not all doctors accept the existence of SPD, which isn’t listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. (Reddy, 8/15)

It came as a surprise this June when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended against using the nasal flu vaccine for the 2016-2017 flu season, citing a lack of evidence that it works. Now, findings from a Canadian study appear at first blush to contradict the research that led the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to recommend against that live attenuated vaccine.But things aren't so simple. (Haelle, 8/15)

Racial inequity and violence rank higher than ever on the list of top child health concerns among black adults, according to a new poll from C.S. Mott Children's Hospital. More than 60 percent of black adults say racial inequities are a "big problem" for children, while 45 percent of Hispanic adults and only 17 percent of white adults said the same. Specifically, racial inequities and school violence ranked numbers two and three on the list of child health concerns among black Americans. Gun violence -- which did not appear on any other's group's top 10 --- ranked seventh. (Welch, 8/15)

Roughly one-third of the globe can no longer see the Milky Way thanks to artificial light at night. The impact of light pollution has long been obvious, but scientists are now exploring the role of constant exposure to light on health, and a study in the journal Current Biology adds both good and bad news. Researchers in Holland say the absence of natural light-and-dark rhythms can lead "to severe disruption of a wide variety of health parameters"—including a loss of bone density. (Moore, 8/15)

Despite decades of warnings from the "Back to Sleep" campaign, many parents are still putting their babies to sleep in ways that raise the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), a new study finds. Each year in the United States, about 3,500 infants die suddenly, from no obvious cause, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A majority of those deaths are labeled as SIDS -- a phenomenon that researchers still don't completely understand. (Norton, /15)