Child flu deaths have schools worriedSat, 17 Feb 2007 02:04:37 GMTBy TIMBERLY ROSS, Associated Press Writer OMAHA, Neb. - Midway through the month when influenza typically peaks, health officials were monitoring four hospitalized Nebraska children, while three North Carolina schools remained closed over widespread symptoms of the illness. And in Oklahoma, one school district reported 350 students out sick Friday, though no schools were closed, authorities said. Still, a federal health official called this season relatively mild so far. Around the country, at least nine children have died of flu, and six other child deaths have been tentatively linked to flu since Feb. 3, said Curtis Allen, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year, 47 children under age 18 died from influenza. In 2003-2004, the worst recent flu season, 153 children died. The four Nebraska children were improving, Dr. Tom Safranek of Nebraska Health and Human Services said, but he didn't know of plans to send them home. None of the children were nearly as sick Ahn "Anna" T. Do, who died Feb. 10, four days after falling ill, her father Chi Do said. Safranek said the four children did not have any known relation or close proximity to each other or Anna, and at least one had received some form of flu vaccine this season. In North Carolina, the three schools in Hyde County closed Wednesday after at least 20 percent of their total 541 students fell ill, school system spokeswoman Carol Evans said. The schools won't reopen until Monday, she said. The illness was blamed for last week's death of a 7-year-old girl in Seattle, and an 8-year-old who died there Wednesday had suffered from flu-like systems, health authorities there said. About 36,000 people die from the flu each year in the United States, according to the CDC. ___ Associated Press writers Anna Jo Bratton in Omaha and Estes Thompson in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report. FDA warns consumers of online drug scamSat, 17 Feb 2007 00:31:31 GMTWASHINGTON - Consumers who thought they were purchasing sleep aids, antidepressants and other drugs over the Internet instead were shipped a powerful anti-psychotic, sending some unwitting victims to the emergency room, federal health officials warned Friday. The http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/news/photos/haloperidol.html — to help consumers identify any suspect product they may have ordered. Consumers apparently ordered the drugs through a variety of commercial Web sites. The FDA said it was investigating. Fish during pregnancy may boost kids IQSat, 17 Feb 2007 02:00:30 GMTBy MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer LONDON - Women who eat seafood while pregnant may be boosting their children's IQ in the process, according to new research published Friday in The Lancet. The results of the study were surprising, say the authors, and contradict American and British recommendations that pregnant women should limit seafood and fish consumption to avoid potentially high levels of mercury. The study relied on mothers' observations of their children's development and their reports of their food intake while pregnant. Mercury is found in small concentrations in fish and seafood, but can accumulate in the body. High amounts of the metal can damage the human nervous system, particularly those in developing fetuses. On the other hand, seafood — including fish — is also a major source of omega-3 fatty acids, essential to brain development. While experts believe further research is necessary to confirm these conclusions, the study's failure to find evidence of increased harm from eating fish is significant. Because seafood contain both nutrients and toxins, it remains a dilemma for regulatory authorities what kinds of recommendations should exist for pregnant women. The study, led by Dr. Joseph Hibbeln of the United States' National Institutes of Health, tracked the eating habits of 11,875 pregnant women in Bristol, Britain. At 32 weeks into their pregnancy, the women were asked to fill in a seafood consumption questionnaire. They were subsequently sent questionnaires four times during their pregnancy, and then up to eight years after the birth of their child. Researchers examined issues including the children's social and communication skills, their hand-eye coordination, and their IQ levels. As with any study based on self-reporting methods, however, the results cannot be considered entirely definitive. The study was primarily funded by Britain's Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the University of Bristol, and the British government. Hibbeln and his colleagues concluded that women who ate more than 340 grams per week of fish or seafood — the equivalent of two or three servings a week — had smarter children with better developmental skills. Children whose mothers ate no seafood were 48 percent more likely to have a low verbal IQ score, compared to children whose mothers ate high amounts of seafood. "These results highlight the importance of including fish in the maternal diet and lend support to the popular opinion that fish is brain food," wrote Dr. Gary Myers and Dr. Philip Davidson of the University of Rochester Medical Center, in an accompanying commentary. Myers and Davidson were not connected to the study. Eating even more than three portions of fish or seafood a week could be beneficial, Hibbeln suggests. "Advice that limits seafood consumption might reduce the intake of nutrients necessary for optimum neurological development," he and his colleagues wrote. Heart disease more common in W.Va. Ky.Sat, 17 Feb 2007 01:03:16 GMTBy MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer ATLANTA - West Virginia and Kentucky — states known for high levels of obesity, diabetes and smoking — have the highest proportion of people with heart disease in the nation, U.S. health officials said Thursday. The findings, from the first study ever to look at heart disease prevalence state by state, showed that states in the Southeast and Southwest were heart disease leaders. Colorado and the District of Columbia had the lowest percentages. The results line up well with previous, state-specific reports about heart disease death rates, obesity and other risk factors, said Wayne Rosamond, an epidemiology professor at the University of North Carolina who chairs a statistics committee for the http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/ Impaired breathing in obese tied to big waistFri, 16 Feb 2007 20:33:24 GMTBy Megan Rauscher NEW YORK - Morbidly obese men tend to have more breathing difficulties than morbidly obese women, partly because they have much larger waistlines, a new study suggests. Dr. Gerald S. Zavorsky from McGill University Health Center, Montreal, and colleagues examined the effect of the so-called "waist-to-hip ratio" on breathing in 25 morbidly obese adults scheduled for bariatric surgery. As the name implies, the waist-to-hip ratio is a calculation of a person's waist circumference divided by their hip circumference. People with a high ratio have an "apple-shaped body," whereas people with a low ratio have a "pear-shaped body." The investigators noticed that the men who were morbidly obese, defined as a body mass index greater or equal to 40, had a larger waist-to-hip ratio compared with the morbidly obese women. "This shows that men tend to have more of an apple shape and women more of a pear shape," Zavorsky noted in comments to Reuters Health. Men also tended to have poorer "pulmonary gas exchange" compared with women. Because of the larger waistlines in men, "the oxygenation of their blood is lower and the impairment of oxygen transfer is higher," Zavorsky explained. "What this means," he said, "is that those who are apple shaped may have a more difficult time breathing due to a large waist circumference pressing the lungs." Due to their higher waist-to-hip ratio, the complication rate of bariatric surgery may be higher in men compared to women, a hypothesis that Zavorsky and his team plans to further explore. SOURCE: CHEST, February 2007. British doctors give Viagra to save premature babyFri, 16 Feb 2007 17:07:56 GMTLONDON - English doctors used the anti-impotence drug Viagra to save the life of a severely premature baby, media reports have said. Medics in the northeast city of Newcastle upon Tyne gave the drug to Lewis Goodfellow -- who was born at 24 weeks, weighing just one pound, eight ounces -- as one of his lungs failed and not enough oxygen was getting into his bloodstream. The drug opened up tiny blood vessels in his lungs, allowing oxygen to be captured and flow around the body. Lewis, who was born in August last year, was eventually allowed home last month. Alan Fenton, consultant neonatologist at the city's Royal Victoria Infirmary, said although oxygen can be pumped into the lungs of premature babies with breathing difficulties, there was not enough blood supply to carry it elsewhere. &;What Sildenafil does is open up the blood vessels so they can capture the oxygen and take it around the body,&; he was ed as saying by BBC News Online. Lewis's mother, Jade Goodfellow, and father, John Barclay, were so concerned their son was going to die that they began planning his funeral until doctors told them Sildenafil might work. &;I don't think you could put into words how we feel,&; his mother said. &;The doctors are worth their weight in gold. We admire each and every one of them for what they have done.&; FDA warns about dangerous Internet drug mistakeSat, 17 Feb 2007 02:03:10 GMTWASHINGTON - A drug used to treat schizophrenia was mailed to some consumers who had ordered other medications via the Internet, and several users had to seek emergency treatment because they could not breathe, U.S. health officials said on Friday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said that instead of receiving the products they ordered, some consumers were sent the prescription drug haloperidol. Several patients had to seek emergency care after taking the pills, the agency said without citing a specific number. Sold legally as Haldol by Johnson & Johnson and in other generic versions, the anti-psychotic drug is known to cause muscle spasms, muscle stiffness, agitation and sedation. Buying medication online has been controversial. Sales of drugs from other countries over the Internet is illegal in the United States, and the FDA has repeatedly warned consumers not to buy them that way. At the same time, supporters say reputable pharmacies abroad can offer safe medications at a cheaper price. In the latest incident, the agency said, packages were postmarked from Greece but it was not known where the pills were manufactured. Consumers had been trying to order specific drugs online, including Sanofi-Aventis' Ambien, Pfizer Inc.'s Xanax, Forest Laboratories Inc.'s Lexapro and Ativan, sold by Baxter International Inc. and Biovail Corp.. The agency said those who have received medications from an Internet seller should compare them to photos of the faulty orders, which can be seen on the FDA's Web site at http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/news/photos/haloperidol.html. "If the tablets received from an Internet seller resemble those in the photos and haloperidol was not specifically ordered, do not take these tablets," the agency said. Diabetes in pregnancy can hamper infant memorySat, 17 Feb 2007 00:54:12 GMTBy Julie Steenhuysen SAN FRANCISCO - Babies whose mothers had diabetes during pregnancy may be less able to form early memories than children whose mothers had normal pregnancies, a U.S. researcher said on Friday. The study, presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, suggests that babies deprived of oxygen and iron before birth are not as able to develop early memories. The need for iron doubles during pregnancy because it is used to make blood cells for the fetus. In pregnant mothers with diabetes, fluctuating glucose levels can result in iron deficiency, which can reduce the blood's capacity to carry oxygen. "When oxygen and iron deficiencies occur prenatally, they alter the development of memory," said Tracy DeBoer of the University of California Davis. DeBoer studied infants of diabetic mothers at 12 months and again at age 3 1/2. Her study suggested that memory deficits that appeared at one year persisted into early childhood. She did not specify which type of diabetes the mothers had, but type-1, type-2 and gestational diabetes all affect blood sugar levels. In the older group, the babies were shown a series of nine objects in three levels of difficulty. In the highest level of difficulty, babies whose mothers had been diabetic during pregnancy on average could recall two fewer objects than those whose mothers had a normal pregnancy. The finding was consistent with the deficits measured in a simpler test of infants at 12 months, she said. The notion that babies could recall anything at all in the first two years of life is relatively new. Researchers have long thought that childhood amnesia -- the inability to remember early life -- was because babies could not form memories, but researchers at the meeting said new studies suggested infants could recall things as early as 4 months of age. Duke University researcher Patricia Bauer told the meeting new studies suggest that infants do form memories by late in the first year that are similar to adults, but "the rate of forgetting is faster than in adults." Memories from early childhood that survive this process of forgetting tend to be particularly meaningful, she added. Texas lawmakers seek HPV brochureSat, 17 Feb 2007 02:02:34 GMTBy LIZ AUSTIN PETERSON, Associated Press Writer AUSTIN, Texas - As lawmakers prepare to debate an override of the governor's order that schoolgirls be inoculated against the virus that causes cervical cancer, a group of legislators wants the state to produce a brochure about the vaccine. "We want families to know the facts," said state Rep. Dennis Bonnen, a Republican. "No one here is against a family studying the facts for themselves and deciding this is the right thing to do. ... What we don't want to do is tell them that we know better than them." Bonnen is co-sponsoring a bill that would direct the state to produce and distribute informational materials about vaccines against the human papillomavirus, or HPV. The brochure would be distributed at doctor's offices, health clinics and hospitals. The bill will be discussed Monday at a hearing also to feature debate about a measure aimed at overriding Perry's Feb. 2 order, which requires girls entering the sixth grade as of September 2008 to be vaccinated. Opponents say the order intrudes into families' lives and contradicts Texas' abstinence-only sex education policies. Perry said Thursday that he is open to changes to his order but would not say whether he would veto a measure eliminating the vaccine requirement. "I'm not rigid," he said. "If the Legislature has some restrictions that they want to put on this, I'm highly respectful of this process." New Jersey-based Merck & Co.'s Gardasil vaccine is the only HPV vaccine on the market. It protects girls and women against the strains of HPV that cause most cases of cervical cancer and genital warts. |
