In short

A round-up of this week's health news in brief

A round-up of this week's health news in brief

Calls for swine flu vaccine to be fast-tracked

US officials should help drug firms speed up the supply of swine flu vaccines to start vaccinating people by mid-September instead of mid-October as scheduled, White House science advisers have said.

“We recommend that the Department of Health and Human Services accelerate the availability of a portion of the vaccine supply to mid-September by having manufacturers begin to ‘fill and finish’ a subset of the bulk vaccine product at 15 micrograms.

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“Such a decision would need to be taken almost immediately,” the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology said in a report.

Smokers more at risk from flu

Smokers may be prone to developing life-threatening complications from swine flu, according to patient data from Hong Kong, where tobacco use was noted in almost half of severe cases.

Twelve of 27 swine flu patients who developed pneumonia and other serious illnesses were either current or former smokers and some had no other known risk factors, Thomas Tsang, acting controller of Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection, told a medical meeting in Beijing yesterday.

“So far this is just one observation that stands out and we need to investigate it,” he said.

Waist size linked to asthma

Women with a waist bigger than 88cm are at higher risk of developing asthma even if they are a normal body weight, researchers have said.

Experts found abdominal fat plays a role in developing the condition. They also confirmed the link between obesity and developing asthma in adulthood.

The research, led by a team from the Northern California Cancer Centre in Berkeley, found being overweight or obese increased the odds of developing adult-onset asthma, with those who were overweight being 40 per cent more likely to develop asthma than women of a normal weight.