Children with recurrent cough, cold and wheeze should visit their physician as these are clear symptoms that the child may be suffering from asthma, a medical expert said here Tuesday.

He said that in many of the cases the asthma symptoms improve with age as the wind pipe of children grows till the age of five years, a development that makes the asthma symptoms recede.

"However, if the child continues to have recurrent symptoms till the age of 12-14 years, it is a reason to worry for the parents and the child needs serious medication for asthma," said S.K. Kabra, a senior paediatrician at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

He was delivering a public lecture on "Asthma among children" here at AIIMS.

According to AIIMS, about 120-150 children with asthma are seen every week at the paediatrics out-patient department (OPD).

Kabra said that in many of the cases the parents go for an allergy test after observing the symptoms of asthma in their children. However, it is to be understood that even the allergy test is not very effective and rather the pulmonary function test should be performed.

"Parents need to understand that if they are asthmatic, their children are also prone to suffer from asthma," added Kabra.

He also said that passive smoking, where the smoke of cigarettes, bidis and hookah is inhaled by the non-smoker, is a major cause of asthma.

"Dust present on carpets, wall hangings, air conditioners, mosquito sprays, perfumes, body deodorants and pollens should also be avoided by asthmatic children as they can be effective in prevention of exacerbation of asthma," Kabra said.

Caffeine, a compound found in tea, coffee and various nuts and berries may offer a new treatment option for women cocaine addicts, research shows.

Caffeine may be neuro-protective and able to block cocaine's direct effects on the oestrus cycle - a recurring period of sexual receptivity and fertility in many females.

Cocaine shifts the oestrus cycle, thereby changing a woman's estrogen levels. Caffeine can block these changes.

"This is cutting-edge work that has never been shown before. It is critical knowledge relevant to women's reproductive health," explained Patricia Broderick, professor from the City University of New York.

Women are more sensitive to the effects of cocaine and more susceptible to cocaine abuse than men.

Cocaine's ability to disrupt a woman's oestrus cycle may explain the sex differences in cocaine addiction.

The findings appeared in the Journal of Caffeine Research: The International Multidisciplinary Journal of Caffeine Science.

A new study has revealed that dietary fiber can cause a shift in the gut toward beneficial bacteria, reducing the risk of colon cancer, type 2 diabetes, and other diseases, while the two specific functional fibers may also have the potential to assist in weight loss when made part of a long-term, daily diet.

Kelly Swanson, a U of I professor of nutrition, said that in the gut, bacteria have the capacity to do a lot of different things, such as fermenting proteins, carbohydrates, or other substrates and they have already been able to identify what bacteria are there and the changes that occur with diet.

The researchers said that now they are asking if they can change the machinery or the capacity of what functions the bacteria have. Knowing what bacteria are there may matter, but it may not matter as much as identifying their function.

It was found that what was most surprising and novel in the recent study was a shift in the Bacteroidetes:Firmicutes ratio toward more Bacteroidetes, something the researchers had not seen previously.

The new information is helping the researchers to understand more about the functional capabilities of the bacteria in the gut when these fibers are consumed as part of a regular diet.

The researchers said that the study was of particular interest to us because other research has shown that having more Bacteroidetes may be beneficial because the higher that proportion is, the individual tends to be leaner. With higher Firmicutes, that individual tends to be more obese.

They added that they don't know if there is any causality for weight loss, but studies have shown that having a higher fiber diet is protective against obesity. It's an exciting shift and helps to drive researchers to study these fibers as part of a weight loss diet.

Holscher added that the whole-genome sequencing data also revealed shifts in the functional capacity of the microbiome including modifications in nutrient metabolism and they saw that there was a decrease in genes associated with protein metabolism, which correlated with the reduced protein fermentation that occurred in the study participants' guts when they consumed the fibers.

The study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Here is a piece of news worth noting for the couples as a new study suggests that kissing even for 10 seconds can transfer as many as 80 million bacteria. Shocking! Isn't it? And you thought a kiss only spreads love.

So, think twice before kissing next time as according to researchers, close physical contact during kissing involves full tongue contact and saliva exchange which leads to transfer of dangerous bacteria.

Along with researchers from Micropia - the world's first museum on microbes - in Amsterdam, Kort studied 21 couples, asking them to fill out questionnaires on their kissing behaviour including their average intimate kiss frequency.

In a controlled kissing experiment to quantify the transfer of bacteria, a member of each of the couples had a probiotic drink containing specific varieties of bacteria.

After an intimate kiss, researchers found that the quantity of probiotic bacteria in the receiver's saliva rose threefold.

They calculated that in total, 80 million bacteria would have been transferred during a 10-second kiss.

On an average, it was found that partners who kissed each other at least nine times a day shared similar communities of oral bacteria.

The study also suggests an important role for other mechanisms that select oral microbiota, resulting from a shared lifestyle, dietary and personal care habits.

The ecosystem of more than 100 trillion microorganisms that live in our bodies - the microbiome - is essential for the digestion of food, synthesizing nutrients, and preventing disease.

It is shaped by genetics, diet and age, but also the individuals with whom we interact.

With the mouth playing host to more than 700 varieties of bacteria, the oral microbiota also appear to be influenced by those closest to us.

The research was published in the open access journal Microbiome.

Washington: Needles too tiny to be seen with naked eyes can soon deliver drugs to specific areas relevant to two of the world's leading eye diseases - glaucoma and corneal neovascularisation, researchers report.

By targeting the drugs only to specific parts of the eye instead of the entire eye, researchers hope to increase effectiveness, limit side effects and reduce the amount of drug needed.

"We are developing different microneedle-based systems that can put the drug precisely into the part of the eye where it is needed. In many cases, we hope to couple that delivery with a controlled-release formulation that would allow one application to treat a condition for weeks or months," explained Mark Prausnitz, a Regents' professor in school of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

The micro-needles range in length from 400 to 700 microns.

The research was done using animal models and could become the first treatment technique to use micro-needles for delivering drugs to treat diseases in the front of the eye.

"The ultimate goal for us would be for glaucoma patients visiting the doctor to get an injection that would last for the next six months, until the next time the patient needed to see the doctor," added Prausnitz.

In corneal neovascularisation, corneal injury results in the growth of unwanted blood vessels that impair vision.

To treat it, researchers have developed solid micro-needles for delivering a dry antibody-based drug compound that stops the vessel growth.

Both potential treatments would require additional animal testing before human trials could begin.

The research was reported in the journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science.