Cold, Flu & Cough News and Research

Latest Cold, Flu & Cough News and Research

Sanofi pasteur gear up for influenza pandemic with new plant

Work has officially begun on the construction of a new sanofi pasteur manufacturing facility that will expand the ability of the United States to produce influenza vaccine for both routine influenza immunization and in case of a global influenza pandemic.

21 Jul 2005

Evaluating how hospitals deliver medical care standardizes practices and improves care

In recent years, American hospitals have made significant improvements on standardized, evidence-based measures of clinical performance for several medical conditions, including heart attacks, heart failure, and pneumonia.

20 Jul 2005

Quality of care in U.S. hospitals

Ashish Jha, assistant professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health and colleagues from Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Boston Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, have for the first time assessed the quality of care in U.S. hospitals.

20 Jul 2005

Antibiotics should not be prescribed to patients with the common cold

Antibiotics should not be prescribed to patients with the common cold because there is scant evidence they stop other infections, and the benefits do not outweigh the risks, according to a new systematic review of current evidence.

19 Jul 2005

Study warns against global use of old asthma medicines for kids' coughs

An asthma medicine widely used around the world to stop children's coughs has no provable benefit for that purpose and may cause harm, a new review of existing studies reports.

19 Jul 2005

Combination of ribavirin and interferon is more effective in treating hepatitis C than using interferon alone

The researchers reviewed 72 randomized trials and 9,991 patients who had chronic hepatitis C for more than six months and were previously untreated, who had relapsed after treatment or who had not responded to other treatment.

19 Jul 2005

For influenza experts, the question is not whether the world is going to have a new flu pandemic, but when

This isn't easy to communicate to the public. Bird flu and the potential for a human flu pandemic have been making headlines in recent weeks, but the subject presents more uncertainties than certainties.

19 Jul 2005

U.S. stockpile of anti-flu drugs is "totally inadequate"

The United States does not have nearly enough antiviral drugs on hand to fight a coming influenza pandemic, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

19 Jul 2005

'Big Gun' government official needed to oversee U.S. animal disease programs

A National Academy of Sciences panel has said this week that one high ranking government official may be the best way to consolidate U.S. animal disease oversights in order to protect consumers from mad cow disease, bird flu and other serious animal ailments that can jump species.

19 Jul 2005

Ducks possibly the culprit in spreading bird flu

An international team, which included experts from China, Indonesia, Thailand, the US and Vietnam, say that domestic ducks possibly pose a major threat of spreading avian flu to animals and humans, as not only do they carry the virus with few visible signs, the virus is able to mutate in them, which means they could trigger a human pandemic.

19 Jul 2005

Fever might be a useful weapon in the fight against cancer

A therapeutic approach for battling cancer that is based on infection with a specially designed virus similar to the one that causes the common cold has shown promise in clinical trials. Now, new research suggests that fever might be a useful weapon in the fight as well.

18 Jul 2005

Tamiflu may treat avian flu virus

Experiments in mice show that an antiviral drug currently used against annual influenza strains also can suppress the deadly influenza virus that has spread from birds to humans, killing dozens of people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand since early 2004.

18 Jul 2005

Handwashing with soap could halve the incidence of diarrhoea in children in developing countries

Every year more than 3·5 million children aged less than 5 years die from diarrhoea and acute lower respiratory tract infection, making these two clinical syndromes the largest cause of childhood deaths globally.

14 Jul 2005

FDA panel says asthma drugs should stay on market but must carry warnings

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel has declared that three asthma drugs are safe enough to stay on the market, after concerns that in rare cases they raise the risk of severe asthma.

14 Jul 2005

Erlotinib increases survival in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer

An international clinical study led by Canadian researchers has demonstrated that a drug called erlotinib increases survival in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer who typically have no other treatment options.

13 Jul 2005

Biologists determine structure of a common-cold virus

Biologists at Purdue University have determined the combined structure of a common-cold virus attached to a molecule that enables the virus to infect its host, information that ultimately may help researchers develop methods for treating certain viral infections.

13 Jul 2005

Targeted program drastically reduced hepatitis A in U.S.

According to a newly released study, the number of cases of hepatitis A have fallen by 76 percent in the United States since a vaccination campaign targeted children in communities with the highest rates of the disease.

13 Jul 2005

ID Biomedical's flu vaccine granted fast track status

ID Biomedical Corporation announced today it has been advised by the United States Food and Drug Administration's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) that the Company's Influenza Virus Vaccine (Fluviral) has been granted a Fast Track designation.

13 Jul 2005

Possible cure for Huntington's disease

Boosting levels of two critical proteins that normally shut down during Huntington's disease, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have cured fruit flies of the genetic, neurodegenerative condition.

12 Jul 2005

Research explains one of the fundamental mysteries of multiple sclerosis

Scientists have pinpointed a chemical messenger that frees some white blood cells from the body's normal constraints, allowing the cells to act like renegades that could damage nerves in the central nervous system. The work, to be published in the July 15 issue of the Journal of Immunology and just published on-line, helps explain one of the fundamental mysteries of multiple sclerosis (MS).

11 Jul 2005