Health Bits

Pediatricians to FDA: No cold meds to children under 6 (CNN)---Cold and cough medicines given to infants and toddlers work no better than dummy pills and can be dangerous, pediatricians seeking to curb their use told government health advisers Thursday.

The doctors told the Food and Drug Administration advisers that the over-the-counter medicines shouldn't be given to children younger than 6 because they don't help them and aren't safe. Such a prohibition would go beyond last week's drug industry move to eliminate sales of the nonprescription drugs targeted at children under 2.

The group petitioned the FDA...


Wyeth Philippines, Inc.(ABS- CBNNews) on Thursday filed a formal notice and voluntary product withdrawal plan with the Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD) and Department of Health (DOH), saying it will voluntarily withdraw Dimetapp Oral Drops, the company's medicine for treatment of colds in infants. Click here for
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Experts: Drug-resistant staph deaths may surpass AIDS toll(AP)

More than 90,000 Americans get potentially deadly infections each year from a drug-resistant staph "superbug," the government reported Tuesday in its first overall estimate of invasive disease caused by the germ.

Deaths tied to these infections may exceed those caused by AIDS, said one public health expert commenting on the new study. The report shows just how far one form of the staph germ has spread beyond its traditional hospital setting.

The overall incidence rate was about 32 invasive infections per 100,000 people. That's an "astounding" figure, said an editorial in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, which published the study.

Most drug-resistant staph cases are mild skin infections. But this study focused on invasive infections --click here




Study shows no language effects from vaccines (Reuters)--
A mercury-based vaccine preservative did not appear to affect language or other similar brain functions in children, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday in the first of a series of studies meant to lay to rest the controversy over thimerosal. More on this story


Landmark malaria vaccine clears another hurdle in tests on infants (AFP)--The most ambitious attempt to engineer a vaccine against malaria has cleared another key hurdle, with tests among African babies showing the prototype to be safe and highly protective, a study released on Wednesday said.

Known by its lab name of RTS,S the prototype is raising high hopes of the first vaccine shield against a disease that claims more than a million lives a year -- 800,000 of them African children aged under five -- and sickens hundreds of millions more.More..