Reuters Health
( Reuters Health) As reported in the October issue of Pediatrics, Dr. Edmond D. Shenassa, from Brown Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island, and Dr. Mary-Jean Brown, from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, reviewed the findings of six studies that looked at the link between maternal smoking and excessive crying or colic in infants.

The investigators found that only one of the studies used Wessel’s “rule of threes” to define infantile colic: crying for at least 3 hours per day, at least 3 days per week, for at least 3 weeks. The other studies used less stringent criteria.

Reuters Health
(Reuters Health) Long-acting nifedipine, added to standard treatment for stable symptomatic angina pectoris, safely reduces the need for angiography and interventions for symptoms, according to results of the ACTION study.

In the mid 1990s, the safety of short-acting calcium-channel blockers was called into question, Dr. Philip A. Poole-Wilson and his associates explain in The Lancet, published online August 31st. To investigate clinical outcomes after extended therapy with long-acting calcium antagonists, the multinational research team designed ACTION — A Coronary Disease Trial Investigating Outcome with Nifedipine.

Reuters Health
(Reuters Health) When patients who routinely take low-dose aspirin are also treated with a COX-2 selective inhibitor, the incidence of ulcers increases to a rate comparable to that seen with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, according to a report in the August issue of Gastroenterology.

Low-dose aspirin alone is generally associated with a significant risk of serious gastrointestinal side effects, the study found, and enteric coating does not carry a lower risk for bleeding compared with plain aspirin.

Reuters Health
(Reuters Health) In comparison with early intravenous analgesia, use of early epidural analgesia does not lead to any important delay in labor progression, according to US researchers.

In the July issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dr. John M. Thorp Jr. of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill and colleagues note that recent guidelines suggest that a request for pain relief should be sufficient grounds for epidural analgesia. The degree of cervical dilation alone should not be the determining factor.

By Anthony J. Brown, MD
MRI is more sensitive than mammography at detecting tumors in women with a familial or genetic predisposition to breast cancer, according to a report published in The New England Journal of Medicine for July 29th. The findings suggest that MRI be used in addition to mammography in this setting.