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Fluoroquinolones are highly effective in treating community-acquired pneumonia compared with β-lactams and marolides and result in fewer adverse outcomes, found a meta-analysis conducted by a team of researchers from the Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences in Greece and Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts http://www.cmaj.ca/press/pg1269.pdf. These antibiotics are also effective in treating severe forms of pneumonia that require hospitalization.

A special stroke supplement http://www.cmaj.ca/press/S1.pdf containing 27 best practice recommendations, including 4 new topics, such as emergency medical services care of stroke patients before hospital arrival, management of minor strokes, vascular cognitive impairment and others is featured in CMAJ with the full document available online. These best practices are part of the Canadian Stroke Strategy, an initiative of the Canadian Stroke Network and Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

Chile has maintained a dual health care system in which citizens can opt for coverage with either the public National Health Insurance Fund or a private health insurance company. However, the two systems operate essentially separate from each other rather than collaborating on common health care goals.

There is a dearth of direct evidence regarding the safety and efficacy of statins and other drugs in children and youth, and caution and alternative management tools should be applied, write Drs. Michael Rieder, Noni MacDonald, Matthew Stanbrook and on behalf of the CMAJ editorial team http://www.cmaj.ca/press/pg1239.pdf. Drugs that are safe in adults are often prescribed for children without data on how they affect children, who may react differently to the same drug.

An evidence-based approach to the management of severe Alzheimer disease is included as part of CMAJ`s dementia series http://www.cmaj.ca/press/pg1279.pdf. These recommendations are designed to enhance quality of life for both the patient and caregiver. Severe Alzheimer disease requires frequent monitoring by health care professionals.

Source: Canadian Medical Association Journal

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Fifteen years after they completed an intervention program designed to help their social development in elementary school, young adults reported better mental health, sexual health and higher educational and economic achievement than a control group of young adults who didn't receive the intervention, according to a new study.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – A new study shows that women who take the epilepsy drug valproate while pregnant may significantly increase their child's risk of developing autism. The preliminary research is published in the December 2, 2008, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

College students who are vaccinated against influenza appear less likely to develop flu-like illnesses, require related health care visits or experience impairments in academic performance during flu season, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

A social development intervention administered in elementary school appears to have positive effects on mental health, sexual health and educational and economic achievement assessed 15 years after the intervention ended, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Children of farm workers are three times as likely as all other children and almost twice as likely as other poor children to be uninsured, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

PASADENA, Calif.--Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created images of the heart's muscular layer that show, for the first time, the connection between the configuration of those muscles and the way the human heart contracts.

More precisely, they showed that the muscular band--which wraps around the inner chambers of the heart in a helix--is actually a sort of twisting highway along which each contraction of the heart travels.

A new analysis of the National Cancer Institute's cancer registry has found that as many as one in five older women experience delayed or incomplete radiation treatment following breast-conserving surgery, and that this suboptimal care can lead to worse outcomes.

STANFORD, Calif. — Scientists around the world may benefit from a powerful new database, available for free online, that will help them to home in on the parts of proteins most necessary for their function.

Arend Sidow, PhD, associate professor of pathology and of genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, recently launched the novel bioinformatics tool, which enlists evolution as the guide to determining the role different proteins play in a wide array of organisms.

In a paper available at the online site of the journal Biology of Reproduction, a team of UCLA researchers reports for the first time that vitamin D induces immune responses in placental tissues by stimulating production of the antimicrobial protein cathelicidin.

The study involved exposing cultured human trophoblast cells to the active form of vitamin D, leading to production of cathelicidin and an increased antibacterial response in the trophoblast cells.