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MONDAY, April 25 — Use of the Menactra vaccine has been expanded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to prevent meningitis and other forms of meningococcal disease in children as young as 9 months, the agency said in a news release.

Menactra is already approved to prevent meningococcal disease in people aged 2 years to 55. The deadly Neisseria meningitidis bacteria infect the bloodstream and lining that surrounds the brain and spinal cord. Despite treatment, as many as 15 percent of people who contract meningitis and related diseases die from the infection, the FDA said. As many as 20 percent who survive suffer severe complications, which may include brain damage, loss of limb or loss of hearing.

Infants and toddlers are more susceptible than older people to the illness, which may cause death within hours of onset, the agency said. Early symptoms often are confused with those of the flu.

Menactra was evaluated in four clinical studies involving more than 3,700 infants and toddlers as young as 9 months. The most common adverse reactions included injection-site tenderness, irritability and fever.

Menactra was first approved in 2005 for people aged 11 to 55. In 2007, approval was expanded to include children as young as 2 years. The vaccine is produced by Sanofi Pasteur, based in Swiftwater, Penn.

More information

To learn more about vaccination for meningococcal disease, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

MONDAY, April 25 — Acupuncture might help reduce the hot flashes that frequently affect prostate cancer patients while they’re on hormone therapy, a small study suggests.

The findings don’t confirm that the ancient Chinese discipline relieves hot flashes, and only 14 men participated in the study, which was conducted by researchers at New York Methodist Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University.

Still, “our study shows that physicians and patients have an additional treatment for something that affects many men undergoing prostate cancer treatment and actually has long-term benefits, as opposed to more side effects,” said lead author Dr. Hani Ashamalla, a radiation oncologist at New York Methodist Hospital, in a news release from the American Society for Radiation Oncology.

Acupuncture, a popular form of alternative medicine, involves inserting ultra-thin needles into the skin.

“We are now designing a randomized clinical trial to further evaluate acupuncture after prostate cancer treatment,” Ashamalla added.

Hormone therapy designed to reduce levels of testosterone in the body is one of the standard treatments for prostate cancer. However, about half of patients who undergo hormone therapy suffer from hot flashes similar to those that women experience during menopause.

“It is a definite nuisance. I’ve seen reports that upwards of 60 percent of men will get hot flashes,” said Dr. Stephen Freedland, an associate professor of urology and pathology at Duke University, in an interview. “Usually it’s mild and self-limiting and improves with time. But there are some men who really have it bad.”

In the study, researchers followed 14 men who were taking hormone therapy for prostate cancer and suffered from hot flashes.

They received acupuncture twice a week for 30 minutes over four weeks. Their reported level of hot flashes dropped markedly.

The question is whether the acupuncture reduced the hot flashes or a placebo effect played a role, said Freedland, who’s familiar with the study findings.

It’s also possible, he said, that the symptoms went away on their own, which commonly happens to men on hormone therapy.

However, “clearly these men described getting better, and it happened over a very short period of time,” he said. “The symptoms don’t (normally) get better by that much that quickly.”

The study, published in the April issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics, also found that acupuncture relieved the heart palpitations and anxiety often associated with hormone therapy for prostate cancer.

More information

For more about prostate cancer, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

MONDAY, April 25 — Countries and U.S. states that report the greatest number of satisfied inhabitants also report the highest suicide rates, new British research indicates.

Seemingly contradictory, the findings are probably explained by what the study authors describe as the tendency to constantly compare oneself to others.

“Deep down we are creatures of comparison, even though we may not always realize that,” explained study author Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick, so living in a place where there are lots of satisfied people may make depressed people feel even more desolate.

That tendency to compare has been well known about the average person, he said. “What our study shows, rather remarkably, is that is it also true of the extremely depressed,” Oswald noted.

The finding is published in the April issue of the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

For the study, Oswald gathered both U.S. and international data. It included a comparison of 1.3 million Americans picked at random and another sample of 1 million Americans involving suicide decisions.

Oswald found that a range of nations, including Canada, the United States, Iceland, Ireland and Switzerland — all with relatively high happiness levels — also had high suicide rates.

They tried to confirm the relationship by looking at two sets of data from the United States only. They found the states with many people who were satisfied with life showed higher suicide rates than states that had residents with typically lower levels of satisfaction.

Utah, for instance, ranked first in life satisfaction but has the ninth highest rate of suicide in the country.

New York ranks 45th in life satisfaction, but had the lowest suicide rate.

When Oswald adjusted for factors such as age, gender, education, marital status, jobs and education, there was still a link, although the rankings changed. Hawaii, for instance, was second in satisfaction with life but fifth-highest in suicide rates. Meanwhile, New Jersey was 47th in life satisfaction but had one of the lowest suicide rates.

The findings did not surprise James Maddux, a professor of psychology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

“There is an abundance of research evidence accumulated over several decades that people constantly engage in what is referred to as ‘upward comparison’ and ‘downward comparison.’”

For the former, of course, you compare yourself to those you see as better off. The opposite is true for downward comparisons.

‘Too much upward comparison can lead to dissatisfaction with one’s life and possibly to depression,” Maddux said, ‘while a healthy dose of downward comparison — otherwise known as ‘counting your blessings’ — can lead to greater life satisfaction.” Research has shown that making a list of things you are grateful for at least two or three times a week can boost life satisfaction, he said.

This comparison explanation is the most plausible, Maddux said. It beats out the more remote explanation that unhappy people gravitate to locations with happier people.

However, the findings are no reason for unhappy people to surround themselves with other unhappy people, Maddux noted.

“They would be better off talking to a few relatively happy people and asking them how they manage to be happy,” he said. “That way they might learn something useful.”

More information

To learn about how to choose a psychologist, visit the American Psychological Association.

TUESDAY, April 26 — Neither vitamin E nor the diabetes medication metformin worked any better than a placebo in treating fatty liver disease in children, according to new research.

Fatty liver disease is an increasingly common, yet not well-known, disorder that can lead to very serious complications, such as cirrhosis of the liver. In the United States, as many as 20 percent of adults and 5 percent of children have the disorder, which is strongly tied to obesity, according to the American College of Gastroenterology.

It had been hoped that vitamin E or metformin might help kids battle fatty liver disease. But when the researchers compared the two treatments to placebo on their ability to improve the results of a blood test that measures liver health, they found no statistically significant difference.

However, when the researchers compared the results of a liver biopsy done at the start of the study and at the end of the study, vitamin E did show promise in improving a more progressive form of the illness, called non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

“Fatty liver disease is a common disease in children that can have important health consequences. There are currently therapies being tested in various ways, and I have reason to believe that vitamin E shows promise in helping to resolve [NASH] in children who have it,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Joel Lavine, chief of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.

In fatty liver disease, fat collects in the liver. The disease is associated with overweight and obesity, though not everyone who has fatty liver disease is overweight, according to Lavine. It usually doesn’t cause any symptoms, and for most people who have it, it likely won’t cause any serious health problems.

However, some people who have the disorder progress to NASH, which involves an inflammation and scarring in the liver that may affect the function of this vital organ. But, right now, there’s no easy way to tell who might progress to more serious disease. The only way to confirm NASH is through a liver biopsy, which is an invasive procedure. A liver function test known by the initials ALT can provide clues to the health of the liver, but can’t confirm NASH definitively.

Lifestyle changes, including losing weight, are the current recommended treatment for fatty liver disease.

The current study compared two potential treatments for fatty liver disease in children: vitamin E and the type 2 diabetes medication metformin. Lavine and his colleagues randomly placed 173 children into one of three treatment groups, including a placebo group. Children in the vitamin E group took 800 international units daily, and those in the metformin group took 1,000 milligrams daily for almost two years.

All of the children involved in the study were between the ages of 8 and 17, and all had biopsy-confirmed fatty liver disease. They also had elevated ALT levels, suggesting that some liver damage might have already occurred. Forty-two percent of the children had already been diagnosed with NASH.

Because it’s non-invasive and the more commonly used test to measure the progress of fatty liver disease, the researchers chose to measure ALT levels as their primary assessment.

They found no statistically significant difference between children taking either vitamin E, metformin or placebo, based on ALT levels.

However, when the researchers looked at biopsies taken at the start of the study, and at the end of the study in children with NASH, 58 percent of the vitamin E group no longer had NASH compared to 28 percent of the placebo group. Forty-one percent in the metformin group no longer had NASH, according to the study.

Results were published in the April 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“Fatty liver disease is a potentially significant problem in children and adolescents. But, we don’t have a medication at present that we can say changes the prognosis,” said Dr. Benjamin Shneider, medical director of hepatology at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. “Vitamin E is probably safe, but it’s difficult with the data at hand to recommend it. The primary end point of the study wasn’t met, and although they saw some intriguing changes with vitamin E, it’s hard to know if those changes lead to long-term improvement.”

Right now, a healthy lifestyle remains the best defense against fatty liver disease, Shneider said.

“There’s no magic bullet,” he added. “Lifestyle changes are the treatment. The good news for children is that they have an opportunity to outgrow their obesity. If they cut back on their food so they don’t gain weight and get more exercise, as they grow, they’ll outgrow their obesity. It’s easier than when you’re an adult.”

Lavine agreed that lifestyle changes can help. “If children ate appropriately and played vigorously, the way they did a few decades ago, this problem would be a lot less common and worrisome,” he said.

More information

Learn more about fatty liver disease from the American College of Gastroenterology.

TUESDAY, April 26 — Severely obese teens are no more likely to be depressed than their normal weight peers, new research suggests.

“People assume that all obese adolescents are unhappy and depressed; that the more obese a teen may be, the greater the impact on his or her mental health,” study author Dr. Elizabeth Goodman, director of the Center for Child and Adolescent Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, said in a hospital news release. “Our findings suggest this assumption is false.”

White teens, however, may face a bit of a higher risk, according to the study.

Researchers tracked 51 severely obese teens in grades 7-12 and compared them to a similar group of non-obese teens. The obese teens had a body mass index of 40 or above, which is considered severely obese and in the top 1 percent for their age group.

Teens were assessed for depression at the start of the study and again two and three years later.

The researchers found no link between obesity and depression, although there were signs of a connection in white teens at year three.

“As clinicians, we treat the entire person — body and mind — and we can’t assume that weight loss will improve all our patients’ mental health or that negative feelings run hand-in-hand with obesity,” Goodman said. “Body size appears to have a greater impact on feelings of non-Hispanic white teens than non-Hispanic black teens. We should be particularly vigilant about assessing for depression during regular visits among this group.”

The study was recently published online in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

More information

For more about obesity in children, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

TUESDAY, April 26 — Most cases of bloodstream infections (sepsis) among newborns in the United States are caused by group B streptococci (GBS) and E. coli, a new study finds.

Sepsis, also known as blood poisoning, occurs when bacteria invade the bloodstream and cause a system-wide infection. It can lead to serious complications and poses a high risk of death in newborns.

Although the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal screening of women at 35 to 37 weeks of pregnancy for GBS and antibiotics for those who are colonized, the researchers noted that many health providers fail to do such screening, even for some at-risk women.

This nationwide study of nearly 400,000 newborns found that the overall rate of sepsis was 0.98 per 1,000 live births, with 0.41 per 1,000 involving GBS and 0.28 per 1,000 involving E. coli.

GBS is the most common cause of sepsis in full-term newborns and E. coli is the most common cause in pre-term newborns.

“Infections occur in almost one case per thousand live births,” lead investigator Dr. Barbara Stoll, professor and chair of the department of pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine, said in a university news release.

“With approximately 4 million births a year in the United States, this equates to a substantial burden of disease. We estimate that approximately 3,000 infants a year develop early-onset sepsis. With current mortality rates, approximately 300 to 350 deaths per year are associated with neonatal sepsis.”

Early-onset sepsis refers to sepsis that occurs in infants less than 72 hours old.

“Our findings suggest that accurate point-of-care diagnostic tests at the time a woman comes in for delivery would enhance our ability to identify at-risk women,” said Stoll, who also recommended increasing the use of electronic medical records.

“A community health record that links the medical record in a physician’s office with the hospital where the woman gets care could enhance identification and therapy for at-risk women,” she said. “If a woman has been screened for GBS and is known to be colonized, that information should be available to the health care team taking care of her at the time she is in labor.”

The study was published online April 25 and appears in the May print issue of the journal Pediatrics.

More information

The Nemours Foundation has more about children and sepsis.

TUESDAY, April 26 — Nearly three of every five children diagnosed with epilepsy do not take their antiseizure medicine as prescribed over the first six months of treatment, a new study shows.

The pattern is usually established within the first month and having a lower socioeconomic status raises the risk of nonadherence, said study author Avani Modi, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

“If they start well, they continue to do well,” she said. “If they start not so well, they continue to do not so well.”

The study is published in the April 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

According to the Epilepsy Foundation, the brain disorder affects about 3 million Americans. There are 325,000 children under 15 with epilepsy in the United States, according to background information in the study.

While it’s well-established among adults with epilepsy that not taking medicine as recommended is linked with continued seizures and other problems, less is known about the long-term and short-term effects on children who don’t take their medicines as prescribed.

So, Modi looked at 124 children, aged 2 to 12, newly diagnosed with epilepsy. The children’s caregivers received a medicine bottle with a special cap that electronically recorded when the bottle was opened and closed, which allowed the investigators to monitor the adherence to the drug prescribed.

The percentage of those not adhering — 58 percent — was a surprise, said Modi, who had found a 20 percent noncompliance rate in a previous study.

Only 42 percent had near perfect adherence, she found. The others had early problems with adherence, either mild, moderate or severe. Some had delayed problems with adherence, starting out well but falling off.

The reasons for this may vary, Modi speculated. Some parents may be in denial that their child has epilepsy. Some may think the risk of the drug outweighs the risk of seizures. Some may fear adverse events.

But her data suggests that the frequency of seizures and adverse events did not play a role in determining how well the children adhered to the medication schedule.

Modi did find that the higher a family’s socioeconomic status, the more closely the children stuck to the medicine schedule.

For parents of newly diagnosed children, Modi said, one message is to establish a medicine-taking routine early. If they establish a routine from the start, she said, it will increase the chances of adherence.

She asks families: “Can you pair the medicine with things already established?” For instance, if a child brushes his teeth at 8 a.m., establish that as medication time.

Modi has been a consultant for Novartis Pharmaceuticals Inc., which has an interest in anti-epileptic drugs.

The study results provide valuable information about how many children don’t take their epilepsy medication, said Dr. Orrin Devinsky, director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at the NYU Langone Medical Center.

“Nonadherence is an important factor in poor seizure control for many children and adults with epilepsy,” he said. “This study highlights both the high rate of nonadherence among children with newly diagnosed epilepsy and the very powerful role of socioeconomic status on predicting no adherence.”

Doctors need to increase their efforts to educate parents and patients about the need to stick to taking medicine as prescribed, Devinsky said.

Obtaining information on the patterns of adherence is valuable, said Dr. Michael Rapoff, the Ralph L. Smith Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City.

Rapoff’s area of research is on treatment adherence in children with arthritis and asthma. “If this [new study result] holds up in other studies, we will be able to identify early on what the [pattern] is,” he said.

The electronic monitoring used is “considered one of the most objective ways of monitoring adherence,” Rapoff added.

More information

To learn more about epilepsy, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

— Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in the United States and many European countries. The neovascular or “wet” form of the disease is responsible for 90 percent of cases of severe vision loss.

Cigarette smoking, sun exposure, high blood pressure and high cholesterol are thought to increase a person’s risk of macular degeneration. In addition, says the Macular Degeneration Network, certain dietary staples can reduce your risk.

Antioxidant-rich foods such as kale, spinach, celery, broccoli, green beans, peas and peppers can help prevent the condition and the onset of its symptoms. Dietary supplements of vitamins C, E, beta carotene and zinc can also help protect the retina from macular degeneration.

— Each year, millions of passengers embark from North American ports on cruise vacations.

Traveling on cruise ships exposes passengers to contained quarters and lots of other people. This means conditions may be ripe for transmission of germs, either from contaminated food or water, or more commonly through person-to- person contact.

The National Center for Environmental Health suggests these tips to help prevent the spread of illness:

Wash your hands — before and after eating or smoking; after touching your face or going to the bathroom, and when your hands are simply dirty.Leave the area if you see someone get sick (vomiting or diarrhea). Report the problem to cruise staff, if they haven’t already been notified.Take care of yourself. Get plenty of rest and drink lots of water. Resting helps rebuild your immune system. Drinking water helps prevents dehydration.Be considerate of other people’s health. If you’re ill before taking a cruise, call the cruise line to determine if you can reschedule, and if there are alternatives to losing your deposit or fare.

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

Doctors Perform Second U.S. Full-Face Transplant

The second full-face transplant in the United States was performed last week by surgeons at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

The transplant was performed on 30-year-old Mitch Hunter of Indiana, who suffered serious facial injuries from a high-voltage electrical wire following a car crash in 2001, the Associated Press reported.

The procedure took more than 14 hours and went smoothly, according to lead surgeon Dr. Bohdan Pomahac.

The first full-face transplant in the U.S. was performed last month at the same hospital. The patient was a Texas construction worker, the AP reported.

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Ban Latex Medical Gloves: Group

Surgical and patient examination gloves that are made of natural rubber latex or have cornstarch on them pose a serious threat to patients and health care workers and should be banned, says the advocacy group Public Citizen.

In a petition filed Monday with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the group notes the availability of safer alternatives such as powder-free, non-latex gloves.

“For health care workers, the major risk posed by the gloves is allergic reactions to latex, some of which can be serious or life-threatening. These allergic reactions can occur when health care workers wear latex gloves or when they inhale cornstarch powder bound to latex proteins that has been released from latex gloves worn by others. Breathing in cornstarch powder bound to latex proteins can cause acute asthma attacks and anaphylactic shock in health care workers sensitized to latex,” a Public Citizen news release said.

“For patients, the danger is also grave. Patients can experience the same types of allergic reactions that occur in health care workers. Also, when cornstarch is deposited in tissues during surgery, it can promote infections, delay healing and cause inflammation, among other injuries,” the release said.

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Doctors’ Prescription Data Case Being Heard by U.S. Supreme Court

The issue of free speech may prove important in a legal fight over the sale of doctors’ prescribing habits being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case pits the state of Vermont against companies that sell individual doctors’ prescribing information to drug companies, which use the data to personalize their sales pitches to doctors, the Associated Press reported.

Vermont passed a law that bans the sale of prescribing information without a doctor’s permission. The Vermont law was struck down by a federal appeals court and the case then moved to the Supreme Court.

At one point, Chief Justice John Roberts said the Vermont law seemed to be “censoring” what doctors could hear, the AP reported.

Similar laws in Maine and New Hampshire have been upheld by a federal appeals court.

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Meningitis Vaccine OK’d for Use in Toddlers

U.S. approval for the bacterial meningitis vaccine Menactra has been expanded to include children ages 9 to 23 months.

The Food and Drug Administration decision was announced Monday by Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi-Aventis, the Associated Press reported.

This is the first U.S. approval for a bacterial meningitis vaccine for children ages 9 to 23 months, according to the company. Menactra was already approved for patients ages 2 to 55 years old.

Bacterial meningitis is rare in the U.S. but those who get can die within days and survivors can suffer paralysis, hearing loss and mental disabilities, the AP reported. The virus spreads through sneezing, coughing and kissing.

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Electronic Cigarettes to be Regulated as Tobacco Products: FDA

Electronic cigarettes marketed for non-therapeutic use will be regulated as tobacco products rather than drugs, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says.

The proposal is outline in a letter posted on the agency’s website, Bloomberg News reported.

In December, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the FDA can only regulate e-cigarettes as a tobacco product if they aren’t marketed for therapeutic use. The ruling gave the FDA the power to oversee sales of the controversial products.

E-cigarettes include a battery, heating element and a cartridge that contains a liquid suspension with nicotine obtained from tobacco plants. When a person uses an e-cigarette, the liquid is heated and a vapor is emitted, Bloomberg reported.

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New Drug Appears Effective Against Hepatitis C: FDA

A new hepatitis C drug called boceprevir appears to cure more patients in less time than current drugs but there are questions about how the drug should be used with older medicines for maximum benefit, according to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration review.

The agency posted the review on its website in advance of a public meeting next week to consider whether the drug should receive FDA approval, the Associated Press reported.

Two studies submitted by Merck & Co. found that patients had undetectable levels of hepatitis C six months after they completed treatment with boceprevir, the FDA said.

Hepatitis C infects about 3.2 million people in the U.S., according to the AP.

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Utah Health Officials Trying to Contain Measles Outbreak

A single unvaccinated person with measles may have infected hundreds of people at two community events in Utah earlier this month, health officials say.

So far, nine measles cases in the state have been linked to exposure to the unvaccinated person who contracted the disease in Poland, according to the Salt Lake Valley health department, the Associated Press reported.

As many as 1,000 people were exposed to the infected person at the two community events, according to epidemiologists.

State health officials are asking people who attended either event to contact the Utah Poison Control Center to determine if they’ve been properly vaccinated against the measles, the AP reported.

In addition, people who attended the first event are being asked to stay home until April 29 and those who attended the second event are being asked to stay home until May 1.

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Some Adults Fake or Exaggerate ADHD Symptoms: Study

Nearly one-quarter (22 percent) of American adults who seek treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be exaggerating or faking their symptoms, according to a new study.

The analysis of the medical records of 268 patients found that some of those who exaggerated their symptoms did have ADHD but wanted to ensure they were diagnosed with the condition, msnbc.com reported.

Others who faked their symptoms didn’t have ADHD but were having difficulty dealing with their workloads and lives, said the study published in the journal The Clinical Neuropsychologist.

“A lot of people think they have it because they are struggling, but it’s not because of ADHD. Often times, it’s simply depression, anxiety or lack of sleep,” said lead author and clinical neuropsychologist Paul Marshall, msnbc.com reported.

Other patients fake ADHD symptoms to get stimulant medications, he added.