A study funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Sir Halley Stewart Trust has shown that opening windows can be more effective than using mechanical ventilation at reducing the risk of transmission of airborne diseases such as tuberculosis (TB).The spread of airborne infections in institutional settings such as hospitals, waiting rooms, prisons and homeless shelters is an important public health problem. [click link for full article]
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New data demonstrated the maintenance combination asthma therapy, SYMBICORT® (budesonide/formoterol fumarate dehydrate), provides a rapid, clinically significant bronchodilatory response, or opening of the airways, defined as the median time to achieve ≥15% improvement in lung function within 15 minutes after administration. [click link for full article]
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Hypoxia, which is defined as a shortage of oxygen, can occur throughout the body (e.g., at high altitude) or within a specific organ or tissue of the body (e.g., due to blockage of a blood vessel, which in the heart ultimately results in a heart attack). In many instances, inflammation is the response of the body to hypoxia and this often causes many of the problems that arise from hypoxia. [click link for full article]
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MAP Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced today that its Unit Dose Budesonide (UDB) drug candidate met its primary efficacy endpoints in a Phase 2 clinical trial. UDB is a proprietary nebulized formulation of budesonide for treatment of pediatric asthma. The multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled U.S. based study aimed to assess the efficacy of UDB versus placebo at two doses in patients as young as 12-months old. [click link for full article]
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CV Technologies Inc. (TSX : CVQ) today announced that Health Canada has approved wide-ranging new health claims for COLD-fX®. After an extensive review, the Natural Health Products Directorate (NHPD) â€" Health Canada's division responsible for evaluating the safety, efficacy and quality of natural health products (NHPs) â€" has issued a product license and natural product number (NPN) for COLD-fX®. [click link for full article]
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Empowering patients with chronic disease to take control over their condition is an important part of management. In a number of lung diseases, self-management programmes have been shown to be helpful; however, these have commonly started with health professionals deciding what is best for patients. [click link for full article]
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Over the past three decades, the prevalence of childhood asthma has increased substantially. It has been hypothesised that environmental risk factors, such as parental smoking, number of siblings, and air pollution, are responsible for this increase. A study of the Dutch Twin Registry examined both environmental and genetic risk factors in susceptibility to asthma, eczema, and rhinitis in a large group of children. [click link for full article]
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Worldwide, over 300 million people are affected with asthma. It is known that both genetic and environmental factors influence who will suffer from asthma. Researchers from Michigan State University in the USA and The David Hide Asthma and Allergy Research Centre in the UK have shown that the smoking habits of mothers during pregnancy increase asthma risk in children who possess a specific genetic make-up. [click link for full article]
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Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the commonest life-threatening genetic disease affecting people of northern European descent. In the UK, it affects approximately one newborn in 2,400. Babies born with the disease, if untreated, cannot digest their food normally, fail to thrive, and are subject to severe, repeated and chronic lung infections which are the usual cause of death. When CF was first described in the 1930s, life expectancy was less than five years. [click link for full article]
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Damp and mould in the home can contribute to the onset of child asthma, according to a Finnish study. Up to one in five cases (20%) of child asthma may be caused this way, according to a team led by Juha Pekkanen (of the National Public Health Institute's Department of Environmental Health in Kuopio). The team's findings are to be published in the forthcoming issue of the European Respiratory Journal (ERJ). [click link for full article]
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