Some hospital patients experience stress disorder
About 20 percent of intensive care unit survivors experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s the conclusion of researchers who reviewed data from 15 studies that included 1,745 former ICU patients. The study also found that patients sedated with benzodiazepine medications (such as Valium and Xanax) were more likely to develop symptoms. The study was published in the September/October issue of General Hospital Psychiatry.
Flu shots in pregnancy could help babies too
A flu shot provided to a woman during her pregnancy can help shield her newborn against the potentially deadly infection, researchers report. In a study of 340 mother-infant pairs in Bangladesh, babies born to vaccinated mothers had a 63 percent lower risk of influenza than babies with unvaccinated mothers. The incidence of any type of respiratory illness with fever also declined. The study was published online Sept. 17 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Falls by elderly women linked to lack of sleep
Women older than 70 who get five hours of sleep a night or less may be more likely to fall than those who sleep seven to eight hours. Researchers measured the sleep time of 2,978 women and tracked them for an average of 12 months. After controlling for age, body mass and other variables, they found that women who slept less than five hours a night were about 47 percent more likely to have fallen twice or more during the study. The study is in the Sept. 8 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine.
Day care seems to offer protection from asthma
Children who attend day care may be less likely to suffer from asthma and wheezing than their stay-at-home peers, a British study reports. Researchers followed 815 children through age 5. Those in day care were about half as likely to wheeze at age 5 as those who stayed home. The analysis supports the theory that some early exposure to infectious agents protects against asthma, but researchers could not make recommendations.
