Age-old humidity remedy may not ease child’s croup
Long-used advice about treating croup by rushing the gasping child into a shower or in front of a steaming kettle appears to do little to ease the frightening condition.
It’s more important to hold and calm a child with moderate to severe cases of croup because the soothing helps restore normal breathing, a new report says, and most attacks resolve within 30 minutes.
Exposure to cool night air also helps, said Dennis Scolnik, lead author of the report and an emergency room doctor at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, adding that most attacks tend to occur in the early morning hours.
If a child does not improve and the coughing persists after 20 to 30 minutes, or if the child becomes pale or blue, then emergency help should be sought, he said.
Scolnik’s report, published in the March 15 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn., was based on 140 children with moderate to severe cases of croup who came to the hospital for treatment. It found that having them breathe humidified air containing various droplet sizes for up to an hour did nothing to alleviate their symptoms.
About one in 20 children younger than 6 develops a case of croup, which stems from a virus or allergy that causes inflammation of the voice box or larynx. The illness often produces a seal-like, barking cough.
Older embryos fare better
What a difference two days makes -- at least for test-tube babies.
Once a fertilized egg is implanted in the womb, the chance of delivering a child is about 48% higher if that egg is five days old instead of three, doctors in Brussels have discovered.
The research, published in the March 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, found that 32% of the 175 women who received the more mature eggs ultimately delivered a baby, compared with 22% for the 176 who received the younger eggs.
The new results come as fertility doctors are trying to improve the success rate for creating test-tube babies without implanting more than one embryo.
Although using multiple embryos improves the odds of success, it also increases the risk of multiple births, many of which produce children with developmental problems that can be expensive to treat.
The Belgian study was an attempt to improve the success rate for an individual embryo by giving it two extra days to mature. The delay also allowed doctors to better gauge its quality.
Vaccine reduces pneumonia deaths
A pneumonia vaccine seems to save the lives of older adults who become so ill that they are hospitalized, even if does not prevent them from getting pneumonia.
A study in several U.S. states shows that hospital patients who had been vaccinated were 40% to 70% less likely to die than unvaccinated patients, or those who didn’t know whether they had been vaccinated.
The vaccinated patients had a lower risk of respiratory failure, kidney failure, heart attack or other complications, Dr. David Fisman of Princeton University and colleagues found. Vaccinated patients also spent an average of two fewer days in the hospital, the report says in this week’s issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Fisman and colleagues in Pennsylvania and Texas analyzed data from about 63,000 patients hospitalized for pneumonia between 1999 and 2003. Twelve percent of the patients were known to have received pneumococcal vaccination, 23% were unvaccinated and the rest had unknown vaccine status.
The vaccine for pneumonia does not provide complete protection against the disease, especially in older adults with weak immune systems. But it impairs bacterial infection of the blood.
Diuretics may cut Alzheimer’s risk
Medications used to combat high blood pressure appear to be linked to a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease.
Whether there is a true cause-and-effect relationship needs further study, said the report published in the March issue of Archives of Neurology.
The study reviewed 3,297 elderly residents of Cache County, Utah, who were examined between 1995 and 1997, and later given follow-up examinations beginning in 1998.
Though all hypertension medications in the study seem to have an effect, the greatest reduction in the risk of Alzheimer’s disease was found in those taking diuretics, which cause the kidneys to excrete water and salt but spare the elimination of potassium.
Other research has suggested that increased potassium levels may be associated with a reduced risk of dementia and that low potassium is associated with changes in the brain that may lead to Alzheimer’s disease.
Phone counseling helps smokers quit
Counseling smokers over the telephone appears to help them kick the habit.
A study, published in the March 13 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, attempted to determine if “quit lines” offer benefits beyond routine nagging.
In the study, a group of military veterans who had committed to quit smoking within 30 days received telephone counseling -- about seven calls over a two-month period -- while a separate group of smokers was sent self-help materials. In all, the study included about 800 participants.
After three months, nearly 40% of those receiving counseling had not smoked in the previous seven days, compared with 10% of the control group.
