Evaluating the Efficacy and Safety of EZC Pak, a 5-Day Combination Echinacea-Zinc-Vitamin C Dose Pack with or without Vitamin D, in the Management of Outpatient Upper Respiratory Infections.

Background: Growing antibiotic resistance is among the most serious threats to public health, with antibiotic misuse considered a leading driver of the problem. One of the largest areas of misuse is in outpatient upper respiratory infections (URIs). The purpose of this research is to evaluate the efficacy of EZC Pak, a combination Echinacea-Zinc-Vitamin C dose pack with or without Vitamin D, on the duration of illness and symptom severity of non-specific URIs as an alternative to antibiotics when none are deemed clinically necessary.

The use of drotrecogin alpha for necrotizing soft tissue infections.

The use of Drotrecogin alfa (DAA) (Xigris) in select patients with sepsis has had demonstrable improvement in survival, though its benefit in necrotizing soft tissue infections (NSTI) is unclear. A retrospective review of NSTI patients receiving DAA at our institution from 2006 to 2009 was performed. Our previously derived mortality prediction model, based on classification and regression tree analysis, was applied to patients and the predicted mortality was compared with the actual mortality rate.

Health plans' role in preventing overweight in children and adolescents.

The increasing prevalence of overweight children and adolescents in the United States threatens the well-being of a vast segment of this population. This paper examines how U.S.