Nonpharmaceutical interventions during an influenza pandemic

A paper in JAMA looks at this in relation to the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, looking whether variation in mortality in certain US cities was related to the implementation of school closure, bans on public gatherings, that sort of thing.

Reference to article:

Markel H, Lipman HB, Navarro A, Sloan A, Michalsen JR, Stern AM, Cetron MS. Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic JAMA 2007 298: 644-654

And readers from the University of Leicester can access it (with specific password) here.

Updated BTS/SIGN guideline on asthma

SIGN Guideline 63, the British guideline on the management of asthma, has been updated, and details of the update are on the web at http://www.sign.ac.uk/guidelines/fulltext/63/index.html. The PDF version has already been updated and there will be an updated paper version in due course.

Thanks to Nursing Times for this one also.

Hospital acquired infection

Two things brought to my attention in a recent Nursing Times:

1. Lactococcus lactis, a bacterium used in cheese making, produces a substance that is effective against C. diff. Read the paper in Journal of Medical Microbiology (doi: 10.1099/jmm.0.47085-0)

2. Dry steam cleaning can be effective against HAIs, according to a report in Chemistry and Industry, which I have not yet traced.

The trouble with blogs

Is that I find it very easy to get very behind! Some of the gap since the last posting is accounted for by two weeks on the Isle of Mull (western Scotland, if you are not sure), but the rest is for other reasons.