The Facts and Fictions About Flu and Colds
Considering how common they are, colds and flu are the subject of a great many misconceptions. Dr. Seth Feltheimer, an associate attending physician, and Patricia Ciminera, nurse practitioner at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, offer their insights and expertise on these sources of misery.
First, the differences: a cold is usually an upper respiratory tract infection with symptoms including a sore throat, head congestion, sinus pain and low-grade fever. On the other hand, the flu is generally marked by a higher fever, a sore throat, a cough and body aches. A common cold usually lasts two to three days while the flu can take as long as a week. Unlike colds, the flu can lead to more serious complications and even hospitalization, especially in high-risk individuals like asthmatics and the elderly.
Now, the facts and fictions:
Tips for Buying New School Shoes
It’s time for back-to-school shopping and that means new shoes. How do parents and kids pick the best footwear?
According to John Walter, DPM, a podiatrist at Temple University School of Podiatric Medicine, because children’s feet continue to grow and develop into the teen years, good, supportive shoes are critical for foot health.
Religion tied to prescribing of morning-after pill
Family doctors working in hospitals with religious affiliations prescribe emergency contraception, also known as the “morning-after pill,” less readily than those with no religious ties, a new survey demonstrates.
However, doctors in clinics with no religious associations were also not prescribing the medication appropriately, the researchers found.
“Really the right answer is ‘yes,’ whenever the woman asks for it,” Dr. Linda Prine of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health. “It wasn’t anywhere near that.”
AIDS grandmothers do what grannies do best - love
Maclarka Jeanet Rakhiba did what any good grandmother would do: she told her HIV-positive grandson a white lie to make him feel less alone and afraid.
She told the orphan she was infected too.
“I didn’t know how to tell him,” said Rakhiba, from Katlehong, South Africa, where she was counseled at a local workshop on what to tell the nine-year-old.
“I’m not positive. I was just lying to him so that he can be free. I thought maybe he would be scared and he’d feel that he’s not like others.”
Breast implants save woman’s life?
An Israeli woman’s breast implants saved her life when she was wounded in a Hizbollah rocket attack during Israel’s war with the Lebanese group, a hospital spokesman said Tuesday.
Doctors found shrapnel embedded in the silicone implants, just inches from the 24-year-old’s heart.
On the move, Chinese prostitutes raise AIDS risk
Mainland Chinese prostitutes, who flock to Hong Kong in large numbers to make a living, are failing to protect themselves, and the number of HIV/AIDS infections is expected to rise, social workers say.
Groups that counsel sex workers say prostitutes are frequently questioned by police, searched, detained and expelled if condoms are found on them. This is prompting many prostitutes from mainland China to ditch the prophylactics for fear that they will be caught.
Although condoms are legal and Hong Kong laws do not empower police to detain anyone found with a condom, police are intimidating and expelling prostitutes from China, the groups say. Prostitution is legal in Hong Kong, but foreigners violate the conditions of their stay if they are caught working.
World Bank gives Laos $2 million for bird flu
The World Bank said on Monday it had granted $2 million to Laos to help the country prepare for outbreaks of bird flu, which has spread through birds in Asia, Europe and Africa.
The grant funding is the first to be approved from the multidonor Avian and Human Influenza Facility managed by the World Bank.
Pricing, lack of tools hamper child AIDS treatment
Doctors trying to treat HIV-infected newborns in sub-Saharan Africa are being held back by over-priced treatments, an absence of diagnostic tools, and a general lack of focus from policymakers and international organizations, Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Tuesday.
The group, also known as Doctors Without Borders, said in a report released at the 16th International AIDS conference in Toronto that only five percent of the 660,000 young children in urgent need of treatment were actually receiving it. Unfortunately, they added, the treatment was hard to come by, and what was available was over priced.
“We want to do more. We know what we’re doing is not enough, because our hands are tied,” Moses Masaquoi, an MSF doctor working in Malawi, told a news conference.
Finding may lead to skin test for Alzheimer’s
The discovery of enzymes that react abnormally in the skin of patients with Alzheimer’s disease could lead to quick, painless test for the disease, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
It could not only quick and easy, but it would be the first accurate test for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease, which can now only be diagnosed by careful psychiatric assessments and by examining the brain after death.
Tapan Khan and Daniel Alkon at the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute in Rockville, Maryland said their test distinguished Alzheimer’s, the most common cause of dementia, from other brain-damaging diseases such as Parkinson’s.
Two methods ease pain equally after knee surgery
For controlling pain after a certain type of knee surgery, continuous nerve blocks offer no advantage over conventional painkilling injections, a new study has found.
Evidence for the benefits of nerve block for pain control after surgery to reconstruct the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) has been mixed, Dr. G. William Woods of the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and colleagues note in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.
The researchers set out to compare two protocols for post-ACL reconstruction pain control that were currently in use at their hospital. One involved deadening the femoral nerve in the leg with an anesthetic delivered continuously via a catheter, and giving patients oral pain medication, with morphine injections prescribed for breakthrough pain.
Study Shows Promise For Simplified Treatment of HIV Infection
A preliminary study indicates that using a single boosted protease inhibitor instead of the standard regimen of 3 drugs for maintenance therapy may be an effective treatment for select patients with HIV infection, according to a study in the August 16 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on HIV/AIDS.
Susan Swindells, M.B.B.S., of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, presented the findings of the study today at a JAMA media briefing at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto.
The long-term adverse effects, expense, and difficulty of sustained adherence to multidrug antiretroviral regimens have prompted studies of simpler therapies for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection. Treatment cessation, intermittent therapy, and induction-maintenance (a few months of triple therapy followed by simplified therapy) regimens have been evaluated with mostly inferior results, according to background information in the article.
Bill Gates says protecting against HIV/AIDS can’t be left to men
Microsoft founder Bill Gates says all the money in the world will not conquer HIV/AIDS unless more progress is made in preventing new infections. Gates says women and other high-risk groups must be given the ability to protect themselves.
The World Health Organization estimates that half of the 39 million people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus today are women, and HIV is mostly transmitted through sexual intercourse between a man and a woman.
Sub-Saharan Africa has 64 percent of all HIV patients and more women are infected than men, while most of children who are infected contracted the virus from their mothers as newborns.
AIDS virus hides out in “accomplice” cells
The AIDS virus has an accomplice that helps it infect the immune system cells it attacks—other immune system cells, U.S. researchers reported on Saturday.
In fact, these other cells, known as B cells, may be key to infection, the University of Pittsburgh researchers told an international AIDS conference. “The research supports a new role for B cells in the development and spread of HIV between cells,” said Dr. Charles Rinaldo, who led the study.
The findings may help find a way to block infection, and help explain why the virus can hide out in “reservoirs” inside the body for decades.
Feeling blue, say ‘I do’
Lonely? Feeling low? Try taking a walk—down the aisle. Getting married enhances mental health, especially if you’re depressed, according to a new U.S. study.
The benefits of marriage for the depressed are particularly dramatic, a finding that surprised the professor-student team behind the study.
“We actually found the opposite of what we expected,” said Adrianne Frech, a PhD sociology student at Ohio State University who conducted the study with Kristi Williams, an assistant professor of sociology.
Rapid Expansion of HIV Treatment Services in Sub-Saharan Africa Feasible
A massive scale-up of HIV/AIDS treatment programs at urban primary care sites in Zambia has produced favorable patient outcomes, demonstrating that expansion of such programs in sub-Saharan Africa is feasible, with good results, according to a study in the August 16 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on HIV/AIDS.
Jeffrey S.A. Stringer, M.D., of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia, Lusaka, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, presented the findings of the study today at a JAMA media briefing at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto.
Zambia’s 11.5 million residents are among the world’s poorest and most severely affected by acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), according to background information in the article. About 16 percent of the adult population is infected with human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV 1), including 22 percent in the capital city Lusaka.
