Cold, Flu & Cough News and Research

Latest Cold, Flu & Cough News and Research

Viewpoints: Health law's 'sticker shock;' Changing Medicare eligibility age is not a simple solution

President Obama said a fair bit during the fiscal-cliff negotiations - speaking for 45 minutes in one 50-minute meeting, for example - but today let's zero in on the claim he kept repeating: "We don't have a spending problem. We have a health-care problem." For our money - and yours - those are two of the most remarkable sentences our Orator in Chief has ever strung together.

15 Jan 2013

Viewpoints: The country's deep health problems; Anthem's Rx policy in Calif. may not be legal; Wis. Gov. Medicaid decision looming

It is now shockingly clear that poor health is a much broader and deeper problem than past studies have suggested. An authoritative report issued by the Institute of Medicine this week found that, on average, Americans experience higher rates of disease and injury and die sooner than people in other high-income countries.

15 Jan 2013

Monitor white blood cell count in pertussis infants

Researchers say that taking early and repeat white blood cell counts could help determine which children with pertussis are at highest risk for death.

14 Jan 2013

Primary-care clinic treatment improves patient follow up

Treating low-acuity emergency-department patients in a primary-care clinic results in better future primary care follow up, research shows.

14 Jan 2013

Greater selectivity in GI bleeding prophylaxis needed

Researchers have developed a risk-scoring system to identify noncritically ill hospital patients most likely to benefit from prophylactic acid-suppressive medication.

14 Jan 2013

No link between gas cooking and asthma, allergies

Research suggests that exposure to gas cooking does not increase a child’s risk for asthma and other allergic conditions.

14 Jan 2013

Less than 45% of children are vaccinated against flu: Study

This year's flu season is in full swing with 41 states now reporting widespread illness. Unfortunately, not enough children are getting the flu shot even though health officials recommend that all children 6 months and older get the vaccine. According to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, less than 45 percent of children were vaccinated against the flu during a five-year study period.

11 Jan 2013

Multidisciplinary team work on proactive approach to flu vaccine design

An internationally recognized expert in viruses, Robert W. Finberg, MD, the Richard M. Haidack Professor of Medicine and chair and professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, is lead investigator on a $12 million project to develop new ways of predicting how the influenza virus changes and evolves in response to anti-viral drugs and the human immune system. This approach has promise for becoming a pivotal tool in creating a more effective vaccine against the virus.

11 Jan 2013

Boston declares flu emergency as aggressive viruses spread across the nation

The country is in the grip of three emerging flu or flulike epidemics: an early start to the annual flu season with an unusually aggressive virus, a surge in a new type of norovirus, and the worst whooping cough outbreak in 60 years. And these are all developing amid the normal winter highs for the many viruses that cause symptoms on the "colds and flu" spectrum.

11 Jan 2013

Cancer researchers solve mystery of how Chd5 protein exerts its beneficial effects

A team of cancer researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has solved the mystery of how one of the most powerful of the body's natural tumor-suppressing proteins, called Chd5, exerts its beneficial effects.

11 Jan 2013

Taking early and repeated WBC is critical in determining infants at high risk of pertussis

A study released today from the upcoming issue of the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (JPIDS) found that taking early and repeated white blood cell counts (WBC) is critical in determining whether infants have pertussis and which of those children are at highest risk of death from the disease.

11 Jan 2013

Patients at high-risk for recurrent C. difficile with unnecessary antibiotic use

The impact of antibiotic misuse has far-reaching consequences in healthcare, including reduced efficacy of the drugs, increased prevalence of drug-resistant organisms, and increased risk of deadly infections. A new study featured in the February issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, found that many patients with Clostridium difficile infection (C. difficile) are prescribed unnecessary antibiotics, increasing their risk of recurrence of the deadly infection.

10 Jan 2013

Tips for parents to safely help relieve child's flu symptoms

Doctors' offices are teeming with patients suffering from one of the worst outbreaks of cold and flu season in recent years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that flu is at an elevated level across the nation. Though virus symptoms vary by age, children are especially vulnerable since they are unable to take over-the-counter medications to help alleviate symptoms.

10 Jan 2013

Loyola uses FilmArray Respiratory Panel to screen infectious diseases

Cold, allergies, the flu or something else? Thanks to advanced technology, physicians at Loyola University Health System receive confirmation of their patient's respiratory illness within one hour. Loyola is one of only two hospitals in lllinois to use the FDA-approved FilmArray Respiratory Panel, which screens for 17 viral and 3 bacterial pathogens in about 60 minutes.

10 Jan 2013

Tips to keep kids safe while playing outside in the cold

Cold winds, icy rain and, in some places, snow—Old Man Winter is here. With the snowball fights, snow forts and snowy hills come some serious dangers. In addition to ducking from flying snow balls and avoiding out-of-control skiers, parents need to be on the lookout for dangerously low body temperatures and frostbite related to cold weather exposure.

10 Jan 2013

Flusurvey: an interview with Dr Alma Adler

Flusurvey is an online system of tracking influenza across the UK. We are linked to other flu surveys across Europe, so there are about 12 flu surveys across Europe in total.

9 Jan 2013

EC approves Pfizer’s Prevenar 13 to prevent pneumococcal disease

Pfizer Inc. announced today that the European Commission has approved expanding the use of the company's pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, Prevenar 13(pneumococcal polysaccharide conjugate vaccine [13-valent, adsorbed]), to older children and adolescents aged 6 to 17 years for active immunization for the prevention of invasive disease, pneumonia and acute otitis media caused by vaccine-type Streptococcus pneumoniae.

9 Jan 2013

New scoring system can help clinicians better identify non-ICU patients at risk for GI bleeding

Critically ill patients in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) are routinely prescribed acid-suppressive medications to reduce their risk of developing stress ulcers and gastrointestinal bleeding, both of which can result from being in a stressful environment and from being intubated. Over the years, this routine practice has often been extended to patients outside the ICU, despite a lack of evidence that this population is at significant risk of these complications.

9 Jan 2013

SNSF-funded professor to receive 2012 National Latsis Prize

On 10 January 2013, Jacques Fellay will receive the National Latsis Prize 2012 at the Rathaus in Berne. The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) is awarding the Prize to the SNSF-funded professor at EPF Lausanne in recognition of his work on the human genome and its defence mechanisms against viral diseases such as AIDS.

8 Jan 2013