Pulmonology

Vaccinating pregnant women against the influenza virus appears to have a significant positive effect on infant birth weight.

Smoke-free legislation leads to less smoking in smokers' homes, not more.

Disrupted sleep is associated with amyloid pathology in cognitively normal individuals, according to a study being released in advance of its presentation at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology

Long-term exposure to particulate matter linked to faster cognitive decline in U.S. women.

Providing lower amounts of nutritional support does not reduce ventilator-free days, risk of death at 60 days, or infectious complications for critically ill patients with acute lung injury compared to providing full caloric nourishment, according to a study published online Feb. 5 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The cost of asthma due to traffic pollution is far higher than previously estimated, researchers report in a study published online Jan. 20 in European Respiratory Journal.

Implementing evidence-based clinical decision support significantly improves the efficiency of computed tomographic angiography use to detect acute pulmonary embolism for patients presenting to an emergency department, according to a study published in the February issue of Radiology.

Research on people recruited randomly from the community suggests that, after adjusting for various demographic, behavioral, and physical characteristics, there is no association between sleep apnea and hypertension.

The FDA announced today that it had approved Kalydeco (ivacaftor) to treat cystic fibrosis caused by a rare genetic mutation. The drug was approved in just three months under the agency’s priority review program and was developed by its manufacturer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., with assistance from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

The COPD Assessment Test provides a reliable score of exacerbation severity in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to a study published online Jan. 26 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Researchers have mined a national database to create and validate a risk calculator for perioperative pulmonary complications.

Marijuana contains many of the irritating chemicals found in tobacco, but smoking it occasionally does not result in long-term loss of lung function, a recent study indicates.

New evidence from a large cohort study of mothers and children in Norway has affirmed previous studies indicating that babies born via caesarean section have an elevated risk of developing asthma.

A recently published paper in the medical journal Pediatrics argues that there is finally strong enough evidence for doctors to recommend that infants and children who have asthma or are at risk for the disease avoid acetaminophen.

A recent study has found that the children of women exposed to elevated levels of DDE while they were pregnant had increased rates of pneumonia and bronchitis in their first year of life.

Hefty toddlers who stay overweight until age seven have an increased risk of asthma, but toddlers who lose the extra pounds before then suffer no additional risk.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology’s list of the top five advances in cancer screening, prevention, and treatment over the last year includes two that address lung cancer: a finding that detection with CT scans leads to reduced lung cancer deaths and the FDA’s approval of crizotinib to treat non-small-cell lung cancer in patients whose tumors have a specific mutation.

Many children with asthma lose control of their condition after discontinuing therapy with long-acting beta agonists, indicates a small-scale study conducted by researchers at the University of Louisville.

Children who present with symptoms of asthma, such as frequent wheezing, usually are treated by pediatricians with an inhaled steroid, but a recent study found that treating a wheezing child with a daily dose of an inhaler is no different than giving the child increased levels of the steroid at the beginning of a respiratory tract infection.

There is strong evidence that GERD-induced aspiration helps to cause lung transplant failure, though more research is needed to identify the underlying pathogenic mechanism of injury to the transplanted organ, finds a recent review of studies on the topic.