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Approximately one in ten US children uses one or more cough and cold medications during a given week. Pediatric cough and cold medications are widely marketed in the U.S. but surprisingly little is known about just how often they are used in children. This information is especially important in light of recent revelations that cough and cold medications are responsible for serious adverse events and even deaths among children.

A biomedical engineering professor has launched a company to market a unique system he co-invented that rapidly reduces one's body temperature in emergency situations to aid in recovering from heart attacks and other serious illnesses.

Your metabolic 'fingerprint' can reveal much about the possible causes of major diseases, according to the first 'metabolome-wide' association study ever carried out. The study provides new insights into the possible causes of high blood pressure, a leading cause of heart disease and stroke, by analysing the metabolic fingerprints of 4,630 adults in the UK, USA, China and Japan, from their urine samples.

Drug abusers who used a computer-assisted training program in addition to receiving traditional counseling stayed abstinent significantly longer than those who received counseling alone, a Yale University study has found.

Elderly patients diagnosed with congestive heart failure who receive implantable cardioverter-defibrillators for primary prevention of sudden cardiac death live longer than those that do not. Further, the health care costs associated with ICDs, while substantial at the time of implantation, do not greatly increase downstream health care costs in this population. The study is among the first to analyze the health outcomes and costs associated with primary prevention ICDs for patients outside of a clinical trial setting.

As of April 29 a total of 1884 cases including 20 deaths of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) due to enterovirus (EV-71) have been reported among infants and young children. The 20 deaths are in Fuyang city in Anhui Province, China. All fatal cases died of serious complications such as neurogenic pulmonary oedema due to EV-71 infection. The overall case fatality rate has decreased from 11% during March 10-31 to 0.2% during April 17-29.

Because the first national study of its kind has found that US mothers report they are less likely to vaccinate daughters under age 13 against human papillomavirus virus, even though the vaccine is recommended for girls at age 11 and 12, it's incumbent upon the healthcare community to work to improve mom's acceptance of the vaccination for younger daughters, say researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center who conducted the study.

Almost one-third of US parents have a surprisingly low-level knowledge of typical infant development and unrealistic expectations for their child's physical, social and emotional growth. The new findings suggest that such false parenting assumptions can not only impair parent-child interactions, but also rob kids of much-needed cognitive stimulation.

Older adults who take drugs designed to block the neurotransmitter acetylcholine -- including common medications for incontinence, high blood pressure and allergies -- are more likely to be dependent in one or more activities of daily living and to walk slower, according to new findings from researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues.

Association determines fate in embryonic stem cells, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers in a report that appears in the current issue of the journal Nature Cell Biology.