Women in Central Mexico who used a vented stove instead of the traditional indoor open fire, experienced improved respiratory health on par with a pack-a-day smoker kicking the habit, according to a recent study.

Increasing numbers of children around the world are suffering from respiratory problems – coughing, wheezing and asthma attacks. Although the key external causes of these diseases were identified a long time ago (traffic and industrial air pollution), it had not previously been possible to distinguish clearly between these two factors so as to have a targeted impact on them.

Mortality in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) has not fallen since 1994, according to a comprehensive review of major studies that assessed ARDS deaths. This disappointing finding contradicts the common wisdom that ARDS mortality has been in steady decline.

OHSU Smoking Cessation Center researchers outline key steps for developing and implementing clinic-based systems to provide smoking cessation treatment tailored to smokers with respiratory disorders

Smoking is a known risk factor for respiratory diseases like chronic bronchitis, but genes also play a significant role in its development, according to researchers in Sweden, who studied more than 40,000 Swedish twins to determine the extent to which behavior, environment and genes each play a role ion the development of chronic bronchitis.

Bovine respiratory disease complex has multiple causes. It's sometimes hard to classify and predict. It also costs the beef industry more than any other disease -- an estimated $690 million in 2006, according to one report.

A comparison of two treatment methods for critically ill patients with severe, rapid-onset lung disorders treated with mechanical ventilators found no significant difference in the risk of death, but did find that the newer method reduced the rates of severe persistent low oxygen levels and reduced the need for additional “rescue” therapies, according to a study in the February 13 issue of JAMA.

A new study published in the journal Current Biology by researchers of the Robert Koch Institute (Berlin), the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig) and the Centre Suisse des Recherches Scientifiques (Ivory Coast) confirms the disease threat, finding the first direct evidence of virus transmission from humans to wild apes.

A new study presented today showed that ramelteon did not exacerbate respiratory depressant effects in patients (40 years and older) with moderate to severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as measured by oxygenation or abnormal breathing events relative to placebo.

Although there is now a wide consensus in China that spitting is "uncivilised" behaviour, as pre-Olympics manners campaigns term it, spitting remains a trademark sight and sound across the country.

Emphysema patients whose lungs are implanted with a pencil eraser-sized, one-way endobronchial valve experience significantly improved measures of lung function and report better quality of life, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researcher Frank C. Sciurba, M.D., reported today at CHEST 2007, the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians.