Although paracetamol given to children reduces fever after vaccination it also appears to reduce the immunity to that vaccine.

Two sets of children were vaccinated but only one set received paracetamol to reduce temperature after the vaccination. The children receiving paracetamol had less temperature rises after vaccination than those not receiving paracetamol. However antibody levels to the pneumonia, haemophilus and also diptheria and tetanus vaccines were lower in those receiving paracetamol which would affect their ability to fight these diseases.

Simple remedy do not use paracetamol in children after they have been vaccinated but just keep them cool with less clothing and the use of cooling baths.

Patients over the years have been receiving the seasonal flu vaccine but does this mean it might help prevent them getting swine flu?

The vaccines that have been given over the past few years are made to recognise various structures on the surface of the flu virus. Some of these structures have some similarity with the swine flu. So could this mean those vaccinated in the past will have some immunity to the swine flu virus especially as there has been a delay in vaccinating against  swine flu?

A recent study recently looked at 240 patients in Mexico that had either received the flu vaccine in the past or had received no vaccine at all. Twenty nine percent (29%) of the unvaccinated cases became infected with swine flu versus only 13% of the vaccinated cases. Furthermore all the vaccinated patients survived whereas 18 of the unvaccinated cases died.

There are some problems with this study but overrall it appears that if you have received seasonal flu vaccine in the past that it may confer some benefit to you. This may partly explain why younger age groups are being affected by the swine flu as the majority have never been exposed to a seasonal flu vaccine.

Although medicine aims to keep patients alive inevitably death comes to us all and to some sooner than others. Managing a persons death causes both emotional and in a lot of cases logistical problems. A website called www. lastingpost.com has been set up to help in all these difficult aspects of death and is welcomed. This website aims to encourage individuals and their families to plan for and deal with death and bereavement in a practical yet sensitive way. The website has four sections namely

Planning ahead - this is for those individuals who want to give formal instructions and express wishes in respect of their own death. Topics range from selection of executors to details of funeral arrangements.

When death occurs - covers the legal and red tape aspects of death but also information how one can be affected by grief and also how to obtain emotional support.

Announcements - here families can make a notification of death and obituaries.

Everlasting post - here one can write about memories of people who have died giving families and friends a way to remember and celebrate their lives.

This is a very useful resource and should be viewed.

Acupuncture has been suggested as a form of treatment to induce labor in particular in those women who are past their delivery date. There were some reports of it being effective but the question was would the woman have gone into labor anyway.

We now have a proper controlled study from Australia which looked at this problem and recruited 364 women into the study and divided into those receiving acupuncture and the other group watchful waiting. The group receiving acupuncture had the procedure done on two consecutive days.I am afraid there was no benefit to those having acupuncture. Both sets of women had the same outcome ie. the same number in each group required their membranes to be ruptured or required prostaglandin induction to get them into labor. Also there was no difference in the time to delivery of either group.

Good study and at last an answer to a recurrent question albeit negative for acupuncture.

Several patients complain of the inability to get a good nights sleep. Once anxiety and depression have been excluded most patients ask for hypnotic or sedative drugs such as Temazepam or Zimovane (zopiclone).

If you are unhappy taking these chemical products then help is now at hand with more natural remedies.

Melatonin, a hormone released by the brain in response to the dark has been used to successfully treat patients suffering from jet lag. However, recent evidence suggests that it can help you sleep naturally, especially if taken 1 - 2 hours before bedtime. The dose required is 2-10mg at night. Melatonin can now be prescribed on the NHS. The name of the melatonin that can be prescribed is Circadin and comes in 2mg doses. Alternatively other preparations are available if you are not able to obtain this on prescription.

The beauty of this product is that it augments your own natural sleep hormone and has no side effects even in large doses and can also be prscribed for children. So if you are not sleeping then try Melatonin.

Interestingly another natural product Valerian in the same studies analysed failed to be of benefit in many patients with sleeplessness and cannot be recommended.

The above question is often asked by patients.  But is there an easy way of finding out how many puffs are roughly left in an inhaler?

Well the answer is yes. 

Get a bowl of water. Take the inhaler canister out of its plastic coating be it blue, brown, green or orange and place the inhaler in the bowl of water as per diagram. The inhaler will now float in a number of ways as shown in the diagram demontrating the rough number of puffs left in your inhaler so you know when to renew your prescription.

Under the new guidelines to GP's all patients over 75 are being given statins to prevent them having heart attacks or strokes, especially if they suffer from dIabetes, have hypertension or suffer from heart disease. The question that needs to be answered is, does this prolong their lives?

Answer is I'm afraid-NO. A study with over 5000 patients were either given a statin or nothing at all to reduce their cholesterol and then followed up for several years. Overrall the statins did prevent some heart attacks over this period but to do this 48 patients needed to be treated to prevent a heart attack. What was worse was that this only applied to men and not women ie. women taking these drugs had no benefit whatsoever.

What is even more depressing is that both groups lived the same amount of time ie. the statins did not increase your life expectancy. Finally even more depressing was the fact that those taking the statins died of cancer more than those not taking the statins. This does not mean that the statins gave you cancer, although this is not ruled out, but that instead of having your heart attack and dying you developed cancer instead and died.

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There is now increasing evidence that Vitamin-D prevents the development of both breast and colon cancer. Two studies looked at Vitamin-D levels in healthy people and then followed them up for up to 25 years.

In the Breast cancer study 1760 patients were studied and those with the lowest levels of Vitamin-D were more likely to develop breast cancer. They were able to calculate that by taking in 2000 international units of Vitamin-D per day was able to give you a 50% reduction in developing breast cancer. To obtain the 2000 units of Vitamin-D / day they calculated you would need to spend at least 15 minutes in the sun / day. To ingest this quantity of Vitamin-D / day was difficult as there are only 400 units in a pint of milk although oily fish has a high content. It was suggested that you may need to take vitamin-D supplements to reach this level of intake if you were not able to get out in the sun.

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