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Wait and see approach to treating children's ear infections
It can be one of the more frustrating and distressing experiences for parents; their child screaming in the night because of a painful infected middle ear infection or otitis media. In the past, children would immediately be prescribed an antibiotic to destroy the bacteria contributing to their pain and inflammation. However, a new study, published…
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Black tea and its relationship to stress reduction
Food science is providing new and exciting insights into how intricately and elegantly linked our good health is to our food choices. This does not only apply to cancer prevention and cardiovascular health but to our mental health as well. There is now evidence that black tea does indeed play a role in helping people…
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C. difficile contamination in ground and processed meats
Although largely the domain of hospital-based infections, two recent studies findings show that C. difficile bacteria is found in a variety of ground and processed meats bought from grocery stores in Canada and the United States. This unexpected discovery some experts say may be linked to recent changes in the pattern of the disease with…
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Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada
How well is our waiting time strategy working? What roadblocks must be cleared before tangible results are seen? The Fraser Institute released its 16th annual survey, Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada which shows waiting times in Canada’s hospitals increased slightly in 2006 and continued to hover near the 18 week mark first…
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Preventing food-borne illnesses
What is one to make of the recent and troubling appearance of infectious and toxin producing bacteria in our North American food supply? It is an illustration how quickly food-borne illnesses can spread and the importance of food safety. How common and how easy is it to contaminate food on an industrial scale? Rob Mancini…
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Initial evidence on the effect of probiotics and maintenance of bowel health and function
Digestive problems, especially for people over the age of 60 may be due to a change in intestinal bacterial colonies or flora. The balance is thus more heavily weighted towards ‘unfriendly’ bacteria, which may make them more susceptible to gastrointestinal infections and bowel conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome. Restoration of the friendly bacteria in…
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Transplanting insulin producing cells or islet cells into people with type 1 diabetes
About 10 to 15 million people around the world have type 1 diabetes and require insulin to make up for the pancreas’ inability to produce enough for the body’s use. In the September 28, 2006 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine researchers from the University of Alberta studied how the clinical outcomes of…
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ER shortages at the Cambridge Memorial Hospital
The Cambridge Memorial Hospital unable to staff its ER, it contracted a private agency to run the department. Med-Emerg of Mississauga specializes in providing temporary medical staff — nurses, pharmacists, doctors, and so on — as it does at 20 hospitals across the province. In Cambridge Memorial’s case, it hired the firm to run the…
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