Swine flu 101: The basics you need to know

You've bought the pens and composition books, but are you really ready for back to school? Take time now to plan how your family will handle a swine flu outbreak, observing these new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

• If your child gets the flu, keep her or him home for at least 24 hours after the last fever of 100 degrees or more.

• If you have a child under age 5 or a family member with a chronic medical condition like asthma, check with your doctor now about how best to care for them during this flu pandemic.

• Pregnant women appear to be extra vulnerable, so if you're pregnant, ask your doctor for a swine flu game plan. A vaccine won't be available until October at the earliest.

• Plan to reduce the spread of the flu virus by having the sick family member wear a face mask and stay isolated from other family members as much as possible or by having just one family member be the caregiver for sick family members.

• If a family member is sick with the flu, keep school-age brothers and sisters home for five days from the time the household member becomes sick. This new advice is designed to reduce the virus spread among schoolchildren, but it will be tough on working parents. Now's a good time to check to see if your employer has a pandemic flu plan that will let you work at home.

The CDC has a flu hotline you can call for more information: (800) CDC-INFO (232-4636).

Be fit after 40

People who smoke, have high blood pressure, or have diabetes in their 40s and 50s increase their chances of developing dementia. U.S. researchers, who studied more than 11,000 people between ages 46 and 70, found that people who smoked were 70 percent more likely than nonsmokers to develop dementia over the next 12 to 14 years. People with hypertension, meantime, were 60 percent more likely to develop dementia than those with normal blood pressure. The study, published in the journal Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, also showed that people with diabetes doubled their chance of developing dementia. Research published in March linked obesity, diabetes, and heart disease to dementia.

Depressed babies?

It's hard to imagine, but Rahil Briggs has seen it. Briggs, a child psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, treats tiny babies who have "flat affect" - no joy in the things that a baby would normally delight in, such as playing with parents or discovering a new toy.

Preschoolers who are depressed are more likely to be depressed one and two years later and to not snap out of it, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Watch for any prolonged loss of interest in activities or ongoing disturbance in eating or sleeping. If your kid brightens up when it's ice cream day, that's not depression, Briggs says. "If they can't express that excitement, that's when I start to worry."

Ask your pediatrician for help and a mental health referral, or look to groups like zerotothree.org for information on mental health programs in your state. Treatment depends on a child's age, but almost never includes antidepressant drugs and always includes parents or caregivers.

"A good standard of treatment is going to be very family-focused," Briggs says.