Infectious Disease Related Articles & Blog Posts

One of the best ways to keep your toddlers healthy during flu and cold season is to keep their hands clean. A good washing with soap and water is very effective in reducing the spread of contaminants that may make your kids sick. But frankly it can be tough to get our little ones to [...]

Even though the flu is less dangerous than many think and the flu vaccine less dangerous than many think, factory farming of animals may continue to promote the creation of serious viruses and bacteria that threaten human populations. Swine flu comes from pigs shoved together where the virus spreads and mutates, then escapes to spread [...]

The Centers for Disease Control say all people from 6 months through 24 years are in a high priority group for getting the flu shot this year. But I can understand the fear some parents have about the vaccine for the swine flu (H1N1). It has just now become available, and it’s natural for parents [...]

How can you tell the difference between cold and flu? I recorded this video with A.D.A.M. to give you information that will help you determine the difference between the two. How do you know if you have swine flu (H1N1)? There’s a great new online tool that can help you find out — and it’s [...]

We’ve all been hearing about the worst case scenarios regarding the H1N1 flu, otherwise known as the swine flu. We don’t know how bad H1N1 will be this fall, but it looks like it could be several times worse than the usual seasonal flu (which kills about 36,000 people a year in the US), but [...]

If you think you may get pregnant in the next year, this may be the most important year to get a flu shot – and an H1N1 flu shot, when it becomes available. When pregnant, it’s generally best to avoid all medications unless the benefits clearly outweigh the risks. With this year’s flu season, this [...]

Think twice before picking up that remote if someone in your home has a cold! Researchers from the University of Virginia, armed with DNA swabs, did a CSI-like evidence hunt in the homes of 30 people with early cold symptoms. Where did they find the virus?

When the American Academy of Pediatrics came out with their recommendation against cold medicines for children under the age of 6, parents started searching for alternatives. The good news is that families have a number of alternatives to traditional over-the-counter decongestants, antihistamines and cough suppressants.

Question: Who took cough and cold medicines the most? Answer: Kids aged 2 through 5 years – the very group for whom the FDA expert panel voted to ban them last year (although the FDA has not done this as of August 2008).

An epidemic of one type of hand-foot-mouth disease in China is starting to appear in news reports around the world as the child-killing virus. More than forty people have already died in this outbreak; all of them have been children. The culprit is enterovirus 71, or EV-71. It’s already made more than 25,000 children sick [...]