Just a spoonful of honey ...
A teaspoon of honey before bed seems to calm children's coughs and help them sleep better, according to a new study that relied on parents' reports of their children's symptoms.
The folk remedy did better than cough medicine or no treatment in a three-way comparison. Honey may work by coating and soothing an irritated throat, the study authors said.
"Many families are going to relate to these findings and say that grandma was right," said lead author Dr. Ian Paul of Pennsylvania State University's College of Medicine.
The research appears in December's Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Federal health advisers have recently warned that over-the-counter cough and cold medicines shouldn't be used in children younger than 6, and manufacturers are taking some products for babies off the market.
Three pediatricians who read the study said they would tell parents seeking alternative remedies to try honey. They noted that honey should not be given to children under age 1 because of a risk of botulism.
Brain misfires in people with self-image disorder
People with a disorder in which they are convinced they are ugly have a brain glitch when processing things they see, researchers said.
The findings, published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, shed light on body dysmorphic disorder, marked by a dramatically distorted self-image and obsessive thoughts about imagined or minor defects in their appearance.
People with BDD often think of themselves as ugly or disfigured and may obsess about minor flaws even when assured by others they look fine.
Researchers performed functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans on 12 people with the disorder as they viewed images of people's faces. The brain scans showed that the people with BDD relied more heavily on their brain's left side, which handles detailed and analytic processes. The right side of the brain processes more holistically and globally, researchers said.
Small babies prone to depression
Plump babies may really be happier babies, Canadian and British researchers reported in a study that found people who had a low birth weight were more likely to have depression and anxiety later in life.
Adverse conditions in the womb that interfere with a baby's growth may also cause brain differences, the researchers report in the December issue of Biological Psychiatry.
Study questions drugs for sinus ills
Common drug treatments for sinus infections -- antibiotics and steroid nasal sprays -- seem to be little better than doing nothing at all, British researchers said.
"Wide-scale overtreatment is likely occurring" because there is no proof many of these infections are bacterial in nature, Dr. Ian Williamson of the University of Southampton and colleagues wrote in their report.
Antibiotics are useless against viruses, a common cause of sinus infections, and their overuse can lead to the development of drug-resistant bacteria.
The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, came from a study of 240 adults with sinus infections between 2001 and 2005.
Some of them were treated with the antibiotic amoxicillin and a nasal spray using the steroid budesonide in each nostril, others got one of those two drugs plus an inert placebo and a third group got two placebos.
After 10 days, 29 percent of those who got the antibiotic still had symptoms compared to 33 percent who did not get that drug, and 31 percent who got the spray were still having problems compared to 31 percent who did not receive it.
The report said the nasal spray did seem to help patients who had less severe symptoms to start with.
Kids dying for lack of child-sized drugs
Children are dying for lack of drugs tailored to their needs, according to the World Health Organization, which launched a global campaign to promote more research into child medicine. More than half of the drugs currently used to treat children in the industrialized world have not been specifically tested on youngsters, even though they metabolize medicines differently than adults.