Rotavirus Vaccine Clears Final Hurdle
A new vaccine against the rotavirus, an infection that kills hundreds of thousands of children around the world each year, has cleared its last major hurdle by showing that it works in developing countries. Rotaviruses are the leading cause of severe diarrhea in childhood, and strikes especially hard in poor countries.
The vaccine has been tested on nearly 18,000 children and has already been shown to be highly effective in the United States and elsewhere.
The latest study, done in Venezuela on 2,207 infants and reported in the Oct. 23 New England Journal of Medicine, showed that it works as well there as in the United States.
While the vaccine does not block infection entirely, it keeps youngsters from getting deathly ill, keeping all but 12% in the latest study from having severe diarrhea.
Doubt Cast on Race, Birth-Weight Connection
African-born women living in the United States have larger babies than do African Americans, a finding that researchers say casts doubt on the role of race in birth weight. The researchers said their study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, does not support the theory that genetic differences explain why blacks are more likely than whites to be born dangerously small, suggesting that cultural differences are the problem.
Drug abuse, poor eating habits, having babies at a young age and many other factors linked with poverty increase the risk of having small, premature babies. Even when blacks and whites have similar education and income, black mothers are still about twice as likely as whites to have unusually small babies.
In the new study, Dr. Richard J. David of Cook County Children’s Hospital found that in the U.S., white women’s babies averaged 7.5 pounds; those of African-born black women 7.3 pounds, and babies of American black women 6.8 pounds.
Occupational Therapy Pays Off for Elderly
Elderly people who participate in occupational therapy to help them deal with the tasks of everyday living can improve their health and quality of life, according to therapist Florence Clark of USC. Clark and her colleagues studied 361 people, age 60 to 89, who enrolled in occupational therapy, a social activity group or did nothing new for nine months.
They report in the Oct. 22 Journal of the American Medical Assn. that those in occupational therapy, a program run by registered therapists to help participants handle activities like grooming, shopping and exercising, improved in physical and emotional health, vitality and life satisfaction. In other areas such as physical and mental health, the therapy offset some normal decline that comes with old age, the researchers said.
Participants in the social activity group and the control group who did nothing new experienced declines in health, function and quality of life, the researchers said.
Heart Attack Symptoms? Call 911 and Take Aspirin
Your chest aches. You think you’re having a heart attack. What should you do? Call 911 and take an aspirin. The American Heart Assn. recommends it, and according to a report in the November Circulation, as many as 10,000 American lives a year could be saved if everyone followed that advice.
The heart association first recommended in 1993 that people take one full 325-milligram aspirin at the onset of chest pain or other symptoms of a severe heart attack. Four years later, a follow-up report shows that not enough people are taking that seemingly simple life-saving step.
Failing to RecognizeEarly Signs of Alzheimer’s
Some doctors fail to recognize the early signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in their older patients, according to a new report in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. As a consequence, even though new treatments and management techniques to improve quality of life are available, many patients do not receive them until the disease has progressed, according to Dr. Gary W. Small of the UCLA Center on Aging, lead author of the report.
“Many doctors fail to diagnose the disorder, attributing forgetfulness or a slip in mental performance to the normal aging process,” he said.
Physicians caring for older patients should make themselves aware of new ways of diagnosing Alzheimer’s in the office.
U.N. Study Supports Education on Sex, AIDS
Education about sexual health and AIDS leads to safer sexual behavior without encouraging young people to have intercourse at an earlier age, a just-released U.N. study says. UNAIDS, which coordinates AIDS prevention for the United Nations, said it reached its conclusion after reviewing 68 studies conducted in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.
The findings coincide with those of a Swiss study published in the American Journal of Health, which found that a national AIDS campaign and sex education in schools resulted in fewer sexually active 17-year-olds. In England and Sweden, the average age of those having sex for the first time is 17; in the U.S. it is 16, the report says.
