A round-up of other health news in brief
Screen wash helps protect against Legionnaires'
PUTTING SCREEN wash into windscreen wiper fluid before driving may protect motorists from contracting Legionnaires disease, a study by the Health Protection Agency in the UK has found.
Following the report of an unusually high number of cases of Legionnaires’ disease in England and Wales during the summer of 2006, a study was undertaken to identify high-risk groups. It was noted that professional drivers were five times more likely to be represented among community acquired cases of Legionnaires’ disease than expected. A case control study was undertaken which looked into the potential risk factors for drivers and passengers.
Researchers interviewed 75 patients in England and Wales who had recovered from community acquired Legionnaires’ disease between July 2008 and March 2009, comparing them to a group of matched people who had not experienced any similar infection.
The study found that driving through industrial areas and being in a vehicle without screenwash in wiper fluid increased the risk of Legionnaires’ disease. These associations had not been previously identified.
The researchers said further studies were required to explore this finding, and to determine whether the use of screen wash in wiper fluid could play a role in preventing this disease.
Legionnaires’ is a type of pneumonia which can prove fatal.
In Ireland the disease is quite rare, with less than 20 reported cases each year. It causes death in about 7.5 per cent of cases, but most cases can be treated successfully with antibiotics.
- EITHNE DONNELLAN
DCU researcher wins L'Oréal award
A DUBLIN-BASED researcher, pictured second from left, has won a prestigious award that will help her develop a new method of measuring how stem cells grow in the lab. Dr Lourdes Basabe-Desmonts, a research fellow at the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute at Dublin City University, was one of four scientists to be awarded a L’Oréal UNESCO UK and Ireland For Women in Science Fellowship last week.
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CLAIRE O'CONNELL
Parents in the US warned to keep baby seats in cars
ALMOST 9,000 infants attend emergency departments every year in the US for car seat-related injuries that happen outside the car.
About half of the injuries happen at home.
To prevent these injuries in babies, car seats should stay in the car. That’s the message of a new study, published in the journal Pediatrics.
If the seat does have to come out of the car, parents should make sure their babies are always strapped in, according to co-author Lindsay Wilson.
Ms Wilson and Dr Shital Parikh, both from the orthopedics division of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, reviewed five years’ worth of data from a national US surveillance system to find records of babies less than one year old who were taken to the ER (emergency room) for car seat injuries.
From 2003-2007, almost 2,000 babies in the sample – so about 43,500 in the entire US, the authors estimated – were brought to the ER for a car seat injury.
Most of those injuries happened when babies fell out of their car seat or were in the seat when it fell off a table, counter or shopping cart.
Head or neck injuries were most common, especially in the youngest babies, who were also more likely to go to the ER.
Part of the reason these injuries are so common, the authors write, is that parents may assume that babies won’t be moving around because they haven’t developed good co-ordination yet. So they commonly leave the baby in a car seat without strapping it in, or set the seat somewhere that puts the child at eye level. – Reuters