University Children's Hospital Basel

FRIDAY, Sept. 6, 2024 -- Saltwater nose drops can reduce the length of a kid’s cold by two days, a new study demonstrates. “We found that children using saltwater nose drops had cold symptoms for an average of six days, where those with usual care had symptoms for eight days,” said researcher Dr. Steve Cunningham , a professor of pediatric respiratory medicine with the University of Edinburgh in the U.K. “The children receiving salt water nose drops also needed fewer medicines during their illness,” he added. Children tend to have 10 to 12 colds a year, “which have a big impact on them and their families,” Cunningham said. Over-the-counter remedies containing drugs like acetaminophen and ibuprofen can treat symptoms, but until now no treatments have been identified that could speed up recovery from a cold, Cunningham said. For the new study, researchers recruited more than 400 kids aged 6 years or younger and randomly assigned them to take either salt-water nasal drops or usual care if they caught a cold. Saltwater solutions often are used by people in South Asia as nasal irrigation or gargling to treat a cold, researchers noted. Overall, about 300 of the kids caught a cold and half were given saltwater drops as their treatment. Parents administered three drops per nostril a minimum of four times per day, using a saltwater solution they made at home with sea salt, researchers said. Not only did the kids get better more quickly with saltwater drops, but colds also tended to spread less to other family members. About 46% of those families had other members catch a cold, versus 61% of families whose kids received usual care. About 82% of parents said the nose drops helped their child get better more quickly, and 81% plan to use the saltwater drops in the future, researchers report. “Reducing the duration of colds in children means that fewer people in their house also get a cold, with clear implications for how quickly a household feels better and can return to their usual activities like school and work,” Cunningham said. “Our study also showed that parents can safely make and administer nose drops to their children and therefore have some control over the common cold affecting their children,” he added. Researchers said the drops likely work by boosting the ability of the respiratory system to fight off the cold virus. “Salt is made up of sodium and chloride. Chloride is used by the cells lining the nose and windpipes to produce hypochlorous acid within cells, which they use to defend against virus infection,” Cunningham explained. “By giving extra chloride to the lining cells this helps the cells produce more hypochlorous acid, which helps suppress viral replication, reducing the length of the virus infection, and therefore the duration of symptoms,” Cunningham added. These findings will be presented at the European Respiratory Society’s annual meeting in Vienna, Austria. “This is an important study that is the first of its kind to investigate the impact of salty nose drops in children with colds,” said Alexander Moeller , head of the ERS Pediatric Assembly and chief of respiratory medicine at University Children’s Hospital Zurich. Moeller was not involved in the research. “Although most colds usually don’t turn into anything serious, we all know how miserable they can be, especially for young children and their families,” Moeller said in a meeting news release. “This extremely cheap and simple intervention has the potential to be applied globally. Providing parents with a safe and effective way to limit the impact of colds in their children and family would represent a significant reduction in health and economic burden of this most common condition.” The research team next plans to investigate the effect of saltwater drops on wheezing during colds. Initial results from this study showed that kids who got the drops had significantly fewer episodes of wheeze, 5% versus 19%. Because these findings are from a medical meeting, they should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal. Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.

MONDAY, July 22, 2024 -- A drug called hydroxyurea has long been used to fight sickle cell disease , but some female patients may have shied away from it due to concerns that it could harm future fertility. Those fears may be unfounded: A new study finds that hydroxyurea has no effect on what's known as "ovarian reserve" -- the number of healthy eggs a girl or woman may have on hand to conceive. Based on the new findings, women with sickle cell disease "should be more confident in hydroxyurea as a therapy," said study lead author Dr. Tamara Diesch-Furlanetto , of the University Children’s Hospital Basel in Switzerland. Hydroxyurea cuts down on sickle cell-related crises and hospitalizations "and, according to the data from this study, doesn’t impact fertility," she said in a news release from the American Society of Hematology (ASH). According to ASH, over 100,000 people in the United States currently suffer from sickle cell disease, where a genetic aberration creates bent (sickle-shaped) blood cells that can get lodged in blood vessels. Sometimes these blockages are so severe as to impede that flow of blood to organs, creating a sometimes fatal condition known as a vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC). The disease disproportionately affects Black Americans. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sickle cell affects one in every 365 Black American births and one out of every 16,300 Hispanic American births. Hydroxyurea has been in use among sickle cell patients since the 1960s, and it's proven to reduce the frequency of VOCs and blood transfusions. However, there have long been questions around the drug's impact on fertility. That's because girls and women who used the drug tended to have lower levels of a hormone linked to ovarian function and fertility. To help settle the question, Diesch-Furlanetto and colleagues collected ovarian tissues harvested from 76 female patients (averaging about 10 years of age) with sickle cell disease who had opted to undergo cryopreservation ("egg freezing") prior to stem cell transplant therapy. Thirty-five of the young patients had taken hydroxyurea prior to having their ovarian tissue harvested, while 50 others hadn't yet gone through puberty when the procedure took place. One way to measure ovarian reserve in tissues is to examine the density of what are known as primordial follicles. These are present at birth and comprise the majority of the ovaries, the researchers explained. They report no significant differences in primordial follicular density between the girls who had undergone hydroxyurea treatment and those who hadn't. “This is the first time we can say, after examining histological tissue, that hydroxyurea doesn’t impact ovarian reserve,” Diesch-Furlanetto said in an ASH news release. She added that the new data is in line with her personal experience caring for women with sickle cell disease: Many who've taken hydroxyurea have gone on to conceive and bear children. Diesch-Furlanetto's advice: "Individuals living with sickle cell disease should still consider preserving ovarian tissue before [stem cell therapy], but it’s not obligatory if they are just being treated with hydroxyurea." The findings might have financial implications for patients, well. That's because fears around hydroxyurea's impact on fertility have some female patients opting to freeze their eggs. But as the ASH news release noted, as of early 2023, only "11 states mandated private insurance coverage for fertility preservation, with public insurance covering it in just two states." The new findings were published July 18 in the journal Blood Advances . Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.

MONDAY, July 22, 2024 -- A drug called hydroxyurea has long been used to fight sickle cell disease, but some female patients may have shied away from it due to concerns that it could harm future fertility. Those fears may be unfounded: A new study finds that hydroxyurea has no effect on what's known as "ovarian reserve" -- the number of healthy eggs a girl or woman may have on hand to conceive. Based on the new findings, women with sickle cell disease "should be more confident in hydroxyurea as a therapy," said study lead author Dr. Tamara Diesch-Furlanetto , of the University Children’s Hospital Basel in Switzerland. Hydroxyurea cuts down on sickle cell-related crises and hospitalizations "and, according to the data from this study, doesn’t impact fertility," she said in a news release from the American Society of Hematology (ASH). According to ASH, over 100,000 people in the United States currently suffer from sickle cell disease, where a genetic aberration creates bent (sickle-shaped) blood cells that can get lodged in blood vessels. Sometimes these blockages are so severe as to impede that flow of blood to organs, creating a sometimes fatal condition known as a vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC). The disease disproportionately affects Black Americans. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sickle cell affects one in every 365 Black American births and one out of every 16,300 Hispanic American births. Hydroxyurea has been in use among sickle cell patients since the 1960s, and it's proven to reduce the frequency of VOCs and blood transfusions. However, there have long been questions around the drug's impact on fertility. That's because girls and women who used the drug tended to have lower levels of a hormone linked to ovarian function and fertility. To help settle the question, Diesch-Furlanetto and colleagues collected ovarian tissues harvested from 76 female patients (averaging about 10 years of age) with sickle cell disease who had opted to undergo cryopreservation ("egg freezing") prior to stem cell transplant therapy. Thirty-five of the young patients had taken hydroxyurea prior to having their ovarian tissue harvested, while 50 others hadn't yet gone through puberty when the procedure took place. One way to measure ovarian reserve in tissues is to examine the density of what are known as primordial follicles. These are present at birth and comprise the majority of the ovaries, the researchers explained. They report no significant differences in primordial follicular density between the girls who had undergone hydroxyurea treatment and those who hadn't. “This is the first time we can say, after examining histological tissue, that hydroxyurea doesn’t impact ovarian reserve,” Diesch-Furlanetto said in an ASH news release. She added that the new data is in line with her personal experience caring for women with sickle cell disease: Many who've taken hydroxyurea have gone on to conceive and bear children. Diesch-Furlanetto's advice: "Individuals living with sickle cell disease should still consider preserving ovarian tissue before [stem cell therapy], but it’s not obligatory if they are just being treated with hydroxyurea." The findings might have financial implications for patients, well. That's because fears around hydroxyurea's impact on fertility have some female patients opting to freeze their eggs. But as the ASH news release noted, as of early 2023, only "11 states mandated private insurance coverage for fertility preservation, with public insurance covering it in just two states." The new findings were published July 18 in the journal Blood Advances . Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.