Within a comprehensive health insurance system, black and Hispanic children appear more likely than white children to have worse outcomes for their asthma, according to a new study. Researchers analysed data from 822,900 children aged 2 through 17 years who were covered by the same health insurance programme. Asthma prevalence, treatment patterns and outcomes were [...]

Children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis (CF) who received the antibiotic azithromycin did not experience improved lung function, compared to patients who received placebo, according to a new study. There has been increasing evidence over the past decade that azithromycin benefits individuals with CF. “Azithromycin is recommended as therapy for CF patients with chronic Pseudomonas [...]

Clinical Update: Asthma – Taking treatment for asthma regularly is important, said Dr Patrick Manning, Consultant Respiratory Physician at the Bon Secours Hospital in Dublin. Dr Manning is also Chair of the Asthma Society of Ireland’s Medical Committee. The aim is to control asthma symptoms. A variable plan that is tailored to a person’s current [...]

Clinical Update: Asthma – Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an under-diagnosed condition and medications are under-used, said Dr Tim McDonnell, Consultant Respiratory Physician at St Vincent’s University Hospital. In the UK, one million patients are known to have the disease. However, two million people who have COPD are thought to be undiagnosed. Tiotropium (Spiriva), [...]

Clinical Update: Asthma – Asthmatics are chronically undertreated and the longer the condition remains untreated, the more treatment resistant it subsequently becomes. Children who do not have their asthma treated are more likely to have persistent asthma into adulthood. Occupational asthma studies show that people who are not removed within two years from occupations that [...]

Despite the frightening regularity of humanitarian disasters like the earthquake in Haiti, which occurred earlier this year in January, international responses remain fragmented and must be improved, according to a group of American trauma surgeons, writing in the British Medical Journal. The surgeons warned that an unco-ordinated push to get people and equipment into the [...]

Prisoners in the UK are significantly more likely to have drug-resistant TB than other people with the disease, suggests research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. And one in four of TB cases fall through the healthcare net once they leave prison, researchers at the London-based Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections [...]