Heroic Polio Effort Hamstrung
    Heroic Polio Effort Hamstrung

    A worsening polio outbreak in West Africa has already spread to nations where polio had been eradicated and has prompted hundreds of thousands of volunteers and health workers to race to immunize 15 m…

    Asthma, Behavior, and Clueless Parents
    Asthma, Behavior, and Clueless Parents

    If your child has asthma, or might have asthma, you may want to learn all you can about it rather than relying on the bits and pieces you learn at office visits or in the ER. Besides giving your child…

    Preventing Ear Infections with Flu Vaccine
    Preventing Ear Infections with Flu Vaccine

    In stark contrast to some earlier studies, giving children flu vaccine does not help to prevent ear infections in young children, according to a large study published in the September 24, 2003 Journal…

    Protecting Babies from HIV
    Protecting Babies from HIV

    My heart goes out to pregnant women with HIV. Even though treatments for HIV continue to improve, its presence casts a dark shadow over a special time. In 2002, about 800,000 babies caught HIV from th…

    Antibiotic Use Dropping
    Antibiotic Use Dropping

    Antibiotic use in children increased steadily through the 1970's, 1980's and early 1990's, and dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria increased as well. Researchers at Harvard University looked at re…

    What is hMPV?
    What is hMPV?

    Most parents have never heard of it ? yet. Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) is a respiratory virus first discovered by scientists in the Netherlands in 2001. It can cause pneumonia, bronchiolitis, and-flu…

    Allergic to Bread? A Hidden Problem
    Allergic to Bread? A Hidden Problem

    Pizza, macaroni, bread, crackers, cereals, and spaghetti are among many children's favorite foods. These foods and many others can be sources of gluten (protein found in wheat, rye, and barley). When …

    Monkeypox
    Monkeypox

    For the first time in history, monkeypox has been found in people in the Western Hemisphere. On June 7, there were six known people with probable monkeypox, on June 8, twenty eight, and on June 9, for…

    The Appendix -- Does it Guard Against Cancer?
    The Appendix — Does it Guard Against Cancer?

    Many people think that the appendix serves no useful function in the body. Many people have even had theirs taken out during an unrelated abdominal operation just to "prevent" appendicitis later. Back…

    Sleeping with SIDS
    Sleeping with SIDS

    Sudden infant death syndrome has dropped by well over 50 percent since the 1994 initiative to have babies sleep on their backs. Overall, SIDS strikes only 0.62 per 1000 babies in the United States. Th…

    Throat Clearing – An Important Clue?
    Throat Clearing – An Important Clue?

    On the historic island of Crete, with its olive trees, orange groves, and vineyards; its old stone farmhouses, monasteries and villages; and its long-forgotten castles and chapels, sits a modern unive…

    SARS Unmasked
    SARS Unmasked

    On April 16, 2003 the World Health Organization announced that the final piece of evidence had fallen into place,* allowing them to declare confidently the identity of the virus that causes SARS. The …

    SARS and Allergies
    SARS and Allergies

    Is it SARS or allergies? Dr. Greene explores... Allergy season brings with it sneezing, wheezing, coughing, and runny noses ? some of the same symptoms found in SARS. The linings of our noses contain …

    Childhood Obesity and Quality of Life
    Childhood Obesity and Quality of Life

    We hear in the news that the percentage of American children who are obese has doubled in the last twenty years, and that the rate of increase continues to rise. Today about 1 in 7 children are obese …

    Disease – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
    Disease – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)

    Definition: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is a serious form of pneumonia, resulting in acute respiratory distress and sometimes death. It is a dramatic example of how quickly world travel c…

    Preventing SARS
    Preventing SARS

    As SARS continues to slowly spread around the globe, parents want to know what they can do to reduce the risk of their kids getting it. But here is the problem: we know that people diagnosed with SARS…

    SARS – School’s Out
    SARS – School’s Out

    All primary schools, preschools, daycares, high schools, and junior colleges throughout the nation of Singapore have been closed until at least April 6, 2003 in an attempt to stop the spread of SARS i…

    Stop Respiratory Infections
    Stop Respiratory Infections

    At the same time the world is learning about a new respiratory infection that may prove to be a relative of the common cold, researchers have published further evidence that breastfeeding can signific…

    SARS Kids
    SARS Kids

    The number of countries reporting SARS cases continues to climb gradually, with new cases confirmed in Germany, Italy, and the Republic of Ireland. Brunei officials have said that the recent traveler …

    SARS Hotel
    SARS Hotel

    It's almost like a detective movie. With any outbreak ? whether of food poisoning or of a contagious disease ? epidemiology investigators follow the clues to try to find something that the affected pe…