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Infants with severely flat heads caused by their sleep position have a higher-than-normal rate of ear infections, a new study has found.

The recommendation to place babies on their backs to sleep has reduced cases of sudden infant death syndrome but has increased the number of infants with flattening of the back of the head, according to researchers at Wake Forest University Medical Center in North Carolina.

They asked the parents of 1,259 children with what is called positional plagiocephaly about their child’s history of ear infections and found that half of the children had at least one ear infection before they were 1 year old. That’s similar to the rate in the overall population, they noted.

However, the rate was 54 percent for children with severe flattening, the study found.

In 124 children, the researchers performed a test called a tympanogram to measure pressures within the middle ear. They found a “marked trend” toward an association between ear-infection-related abnormalities and the severity of plagiocephaly.

“The significantly high percentage of tympanogram readings that pointed to otitis media [ear infection] … suggests an overall malfunction of the middle ear drainage function of the eustachian tube in these children,” the researchers wrote.

The study is in the September issue of the Journal of Craniofacial Surgery.

Because ear infections can have a major impact on hearing and other aspects of child development, the researchers noted, further study is needed to learn more about ear infection risk in children with positional plagiocephaly.

Johnson & Johnson said on Thursday it is recalling some lots of infants’ and children’s Tylenol because of a possible bacterial contamination of the popular pain and fever treatment.

Tylenol products being recalled were manufactured between April and June 2008, the diversified healthcare giant said.

The company identified 21 varieties of the products, which come in various flavors and forms, and 57 different lot numbers, affected by the recall..

The company said it has contacted wholesalers and retailers about the recall, which affects only the United States. It was not immediately clear how widely distributed the 57 affected lots were within the United States.

In a letter dated September 18, J&J unit McNeil Consumer Healthcare said that after consulting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, it initiated the voluntary recall as a precaution.

The company said that one of the inactive ingredients did not meet internal testing requirements and Burkholderia cepacia, or B. cepacia, bacteria were detected in a portion of raw material that was not used in the finished product.

“However, it was decided, as a precaution, to recall all product that utilized any of the raw material manufactured at the same time as the raw material that tested positive for the bacteria,” the letter said, emphasizing that no bacteria were found in the finished product, which met all specifications.

J&J said the likelihood of a serious medical problem arising from the recalled product was remote.

“The FDA is working closely with the company to monitor this recall,” agency spokeswoman Sandy Walsh said.

“There are no adverse events reported by patients using this product,” she added.

Health consequences of B. cepacia infections could be severe in high-risk patients, such as those with underlying pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis or compromised immune systems.

Johnson & Johnson shares closed down 5 cents at $60.72 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Medications, personal hygiene, mask-wearing and quarantines all help prevent the spread of viral infections such as the flu, and researchers now suggest that the latter three strategies should be given more attention in plans to deal with pandemics.

In an update of a 2007 study, Dr. Tom Jefferson of the Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group in Rome, Italy, and colleagues reviewed the results of 59 studies that looked at the effectiveness of strategies to reduce the spread of viral germs that cause respiratory diseases such as the flu and SARS. The new review appears online Sept. 22 in BMJ.

The researchers looked at studies that compared a number of strategies (quarantine/isolation, distancing sick people from healthy people through other methods, better hygiene) with other interventions, or doing nothing.

The review found that wearing gloves, gowns and masks is effective, and so is hand washing more than 10 times a day. The strategies are even more effective when people use more than one of them.

Jefferson’s team also found that the highest quality studies reported that the spread of diseases can be lowered through hygiene in households and among young children.

The researchers found only limited evidence that so-called N95 facial masks, which are uncomfortable and expensive, are better than simple surgical masks.

Also, they noted that it is unclear whether people need to add antiseptics to normal soap and water.

The researchers called for national school programs to encourage hand washing and stressed that gloves, gowns, masks and isolation of certain patients are all appropriate when there’s high risk that the respiratory diseases will spread.

“More resources should be invested into studying which physical interventions are the most effective, flexible and cost-effective means of minimizing the impact of acute respiratory tract infections,” the study authors concluded.

People who are heavily in debt are more likely to be heavy themselves, too, according to new research from Germany.

“Overindebted” people - defined as those who would find it impossible to pay off debts in a reasonable time frame — were about twice as likely to be overweight as the general population. They were more than 2.5 times as likely to be obese, Eva Muenster of the University of Mainz and her colleagues found.

European countries, as well as the United States, have seen a sharp rise in the percentage of people who are overindebted, Muenster and her team say. Estimates are that 3 million households - 7.6 percent - of German households fit into the “over-indebted” criteria.

Socioeconomic status is clearly linked to health, the researchers add, but techniques now used to measure it don’t take debt into account. To investigate how debt might affect health, they surveyed 949 people who were receiving counseling for debt and insolvency at centers in two German states, comparing them to 8,318 people who participated in a 2003 telephone health survey and were considered to represent a slice of the general population that was not indebted.

The indebted individuals were younger, less educated, and less wealthy, and were also more likely to be depressed, overweight, or obese, the researchers found. About 11 percent of the general population was obese, compared to 25 percent of the indebted group. The indebted individuals were also more likely to smoke every day.

After taking these factors into account, Muenster and her colleagues found that being overindebted was associated with a 1.97-fold greater likelihood of being overweight, and a 2.56-fold greater risk of obesity.

Psychological factors could contribute to the greater risk of being overweight or obese among indebted people, Muenster and her team note, who may eat to cope with stress and depression. Healthy foods may be less affordable for them, the researchers add, while “energy-dense food such as sweets or fatty snacks are often less expensive compared to food with lower energy density such as fruit or vegetables.”

The findings don’t rule out the possibility that overweight or obese people are more likely to get into debt because they have a tougher time finding a job or make less money than slimmer people, the researchers note.

Muenster and her colleagues conclude by calling for investigators looking at socioeconomic status and health to include indebtedness in their analyses, along with standard measures like income and education.

An adult woman’s intake of meat, eggs and dairy products should not boost her risk for breast cancer, new research shows.

For years, dietary factors have been debated as either boosting or reducing the risk of breast cancer, with research yielding conflicting results. But in the new research, scientists could not conclude that meat, eggs or dairy product intake as an adult raised breast cancer risk.

A second new study didn’t find that conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) — found in dairy products and in meat such as beef — provided any protective effect again breast cancer, as some experts had suggested. It did not raise the risk, either.

“So far, we haven’t seen a strong link between meat intake and fat intake in adulthood and breast cancer in adulthood,” concluded Dr. Eleni Linos, MD, an epidemiologist at Stanford University Medical Center, who has also researched the link and co-authored an editorial to accompany the two research reports. All are published in the September issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

But, she cautioned, “women should probably try to reduce their red meat intake to prevent cardiovascular disease.”

In the first study, Italian researchers from Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori in Milan and other institutions used data from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC). They looked at diet information collected from almost 320,000 women between 1992 and 2003.

The women were from numerous European countries, including Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the U.K. The team found 7,119 cases of breast cancer during follow up that lasted a median of nearly nine years (half of the patients were followed longer, half less). While they found a link between high butter consumption and breast cancer risk, it was only in premenopausal women. They did not find overall that meat, egg or dairy product intake was linked with an increased risk for breast cancer.

The researchers did find that a high intake of processed meat products was linked with increased breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women, but not overall meat intake.

Also, high red meat consumption was associated with an increased breast cancer risk in some countries, but there was no consistent link overall, the team said.

In the second study, researchers evaluated the diets of more than 61,000 women, all cancer-free, who answered a questionnaire from 1987 to 1990. Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and Central Hospital in Vasteras, Sweden, noted almost 3,000 cases of breast cancer from women in the group over an average follow-up of more than 17 years. When they evaluated links between the cancer cases and CLA intake, they found no effect, either good or bad.

”These two studies are a reminder that the connections between what we eat and disease development are multifactorial,” said Connie Diekman, a registered dietitian and director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis.

Recall bias — people not remembering exactly what they had eaten — might have skewed the results, she said.

The study result, however, “does not give us permission to eat as much as desired,” she said. “I would remind readers to keep their food choices focused on what we know, not on every emerging study. So, using the Dietary Guidelines to shape choices and portions will be the best bet for health promotion and disease prevention.”

In yet another study in the same journal, researchers found that dietary fiber intake reduced the risk of breast cancer, confirming previous research. That study, the National Institutes of Health–AARP Diet and Health Study, looked at the intake of fiber to breast cancer among more than 185,000 postmenopausal women, with an average age of 62.

The researchers found 5,461 cases of breast cancer during an average of seven years of follow-up. Those who ate the most dietary fiber — 26 grams a day — had about a 13 percent reduction in risk of breast cancer compared to those who ate the least, just 11 grams a day.

An intake of 25 grams a day of fiber is considered adequate for adult women.

Swimming in pools disinfected with chlorine may increase the odds that a child will develop asthma or allergies, new research suggests.

The study found that teenagers who spent more than 1,000 hours swimming in chlorinated pools, either indoors or outdoors, had more than eight times the risk of having asthma than did teens who primarily swam in pools using a copper-silver disinfecting method.

“Chlorinated pool attendance has a very significant impact on the prevalence of allergic diseases in the studied population,” said lead author Alfred Bernard, a professor of toxicology and research director at Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels, Belgium.

“When used properly, [chlorine] is an efficient and safe disinfectant for swimming pools. However, when too much chlorine is added to water or builds up in the air of indoor pools, there is unavoidably some irritation of the organs of the bather in contact with the water and air,” he explained. “There is now increasing evidence that these irritating effects may be detrimental to the airways of regular swimmers, especially the children who are the most vulnerable and the most frequent attendees of chlorinated pools.”

Results of the study will be published in the Sept. 14 online issue of Pediatrics.

More than 17 million people in the United States have asthma, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. Symptoms of the disease include wheezing, shortness of breath and coughing. The airway disease can be triggered by a number of factors, such as cold air, exercise and chemical irritants. While chlorine has long been known to be an airway irritant and potential trigger of asthma, particularly in indoor pools, Bernard’s study suggests that chlorinated pools might play a role in the development of asthma and allergy.

The study included 847 Belgian teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18. All had attended indoor or outdoor swimming pools, but at various rates of attendance. One hundred and fourteen children mainly attended pools that were kept clean with a copper-silver disinfect, rather than chlorine. The remainder primarily attended pools disinfected with chlorine.

The number of children who ever had asthma went up in proportion to their chlorinated pool exposure. Teens who swam for 100 to 500 hours in chlorinated pools had an 80 percent increased risk of having asthma, while those who logged 500 to 1,000 hours had just over twice the risk. When teens spend more than 1,000 hours swimming in chlorinated water, the risk of ever having had asthma nearly quadrupled. The risk of currently having asthma was more than eight times higher in the group with more than 1,000 hours in chlorinated pools compared to those who were rarely in chlorinated water, according to the study.

The risk of allergies also increased significantly when adolescents spent more than 100 hours swimming in chlorinated pools. In fact, the risk of hay fever and other allergies more than doubled with significant chlorinated pool exposure.

Dr. Jennifer Appleyard, chief of allergy and immunology at St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit, said this study highlights the fact that “asthma and allergies are caused by a multitude of different factors, and chlorine may have a potential effect. But, this is a very preliminary study, and we don’t yet know what the whole picture is.”

She said that she wouldn’t advise parents to stop taking their kids swimming, even if they have asthma already. “If your kids have asthma and you know chlorine is a trigger, it’s a good idea to try to limit their exposure, but you can’t exclude your child from everything and every potential trigger. You have to let them be kids.”

If you know your child is bothered by chlorine exposure, and they have an event such as a birthday party that they really want to attend, discuss it with your child’s doctor to find out the best way to manage the exposure.

Bernard said that if you have a backyard pool, you should use as little chlorine as you can to safely disinfect the pool. He said that many people over chlorinate their pools to get clear blue water. But, he said, “chlorine is a disinfectant, not a cleaning agent.”

Study finds 83 percent of people with allergic rhinitis say it kills the mood.

Having allergies can take a toll on your sex life, new research shows.

When polled, 83 percent of people with allergic rhinitis said it affected their sexual activity at least sometimes, with almost 18 percent of those affected saying their allergies nearly always got in the way of a satisfying sex life.

“I was kind of surprised that it made that much of a difference,” said study author Dr. Michael Benninger, chairman of the Head and Neck Institute at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Commercials for allergy relief products tend to focus on helping people get back to enjoying an active lifestyle, such as taking their kids to the park, Benninger said. Rarely is there mention of sex lives, and that could be because it’s an area that has been studied so little, he noted.

Allergic rhinitis, also called hay fever, affects 10 to 40 percent of the U.S. population, according to the researchers. Symptoms include a runny nose, congestion and sinus pressure. Those affected are reacting to indoor or airborne allergens such as pollens and dust mites.

Benninger’s team also found that allergic rhinitis was linked with sleep problems, which other studies have found as well. The study was published recently in Allergy and Asthma Proceedings.

The researchers polled about 700 people, roughly half with allergic rhinitis, asking questions about sexual function, sleep and fatigue. The participants averaged in their late 30s to mid-40s, and those with allergic rhinitis were not being treated for their allergies.

Though about 17 percent of those with allergic rhinitis said they always or almost always noticed an adverse impact on their sex life, just 5 percent of those who did not have the condition said their sex life wasn’t good.

Exactly why the allergies affect sexual functioning isn’t certain, but Benninger suspects that the runny nose, itchy eyes and other symptoms can make a person feel less than sexy.

Those with allergic rhinitis were also more likely to have sleep problems.

The study definitely sheds light on a new area, said Dr. Clifford Bassett, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the Long Island College Hospital/State University of New York and a clinical instructor at New York University School of Medicine. “Sexual function is not something typically evaluated [with allergies],” he said.

But the finding makes sense to Bassett, based on what patients report to him. “If people have a runny, drippy nose and feel unsexy, they might be embarrassed by what would be normal intimate contact,” he said.

But the condition can be treated, both Bassett and Benninger stressed. From over-the-counter nasal sprays to prescription or over-the-counter antihistamines and prescription intranasal steroids, options abound.

The message to allergy sufferers, Benninger said, is not to confine lovemaking to times when their symptoms aren’t so bad but to seek treatment that can help them feel better much of the time. Paying attention to allergy triggers and, for instance, closing bedroom windows so pollen levels are at a minimum can help, too.

Bassett also said he hopes the study will wake up those with allergy symptoms whose sex life is less than ideal. “I think it’s essential for patients to realize that help is out there,” he said. “They don’t need to be a casualty in the lovemaking department.”