Background

Cough causes concern for parents and is a major cause of outpatient visits. Cough can impact quality of life, cause anxiety, and affects sleep in children and their parents. Honey has been used to alleviate cough symptoms. This is an update of reviews previously published in 2014, 2012, and 2010.

Key findings

·       -  Honey probably reduces cough symptoms more than placebo and salbutamol (a drug that opens lung airways) when given for up to three days.

·        - Honey is probably more effective at providing cough relief and reducing the impact of cough on children’s sleep at night than no treatment.

·       -   There may be little or no difference between the effects of honey and dextromethorphan (an ingredient in over-the-counter cough remedies) or honey and bromelin with honey on all cough symptoms.

Background

Cough causes concern for parents and is a major cause of outpatient visits. Cough can impact quality of life, cause anxiety, and affects sleep in children and their parents. Honey has been used to alleviate cough symptoms. This is an update of reviews previously published in 2014, 2012, and 2010.

Key findings

·       -  Honey probably reduces cough symptoms more than placebo and salbutamol (a drug that opens lung airways) when given for up to three days.

·        - Honey is probably more effective at providing cough relief and reducing the impact of cough on children’s sleep at night than no treatment.

·       -   There may be little or no difference between the effects of honey and dextromethorphan (an ingredient in over-the-counter cough remedies) or honey and bromelin with honey on all cough symptoms.

Background

Most tobacco control programmes for adolescents are based on prevention of uptake, but teenage smoking is still common. It is unclear if interventions that are effective for adults can also help adolescents to quit smoking. This is an update of a Cochrane Review first published in 2006.

Key findings

• There is limited evidence that either behavioural support or smoking cessation medication increases the proportion of young people that stop smoking in the long-term.

• Medications such as nicotine replacement and bupropion were not successful with adolescents, and some adverse events were reported, although these events were generally mild.

Background

The pain of labour can be intense, with body tension, anxiety and fear making it worse. Many women would like to go through labour without using drugs, or invasive methods such as an epidural. These women often turn to complementary therapies to help to reduce the intensity of pain in labour and improve their experiences of labour. Many complementary therapies are used by women in labour, including acupuncture, mind-body techniques, massage, reflexology, herbal medicines or homoeopathy, hypnosis, music and aromatherapy. Mind-body techniques for relaxation can be widely accessible to women through the teaching of these techniques during antenatal classes. The relaxation techniques include guided imagery, progressive relaxation and breathing techniques. We also include yoga and music in this review. Many of these relaxation techniques are coping strategies used to reduce the experience of pain. It is important to examine if these therapies work and are safe, to enable women to make informed decisions about their care.

Key findings

- The use of some relaxation therapies, yoga, or music may possibly be helpful with reducing the intensity of pain, and in helping women feel more in control and satisfied with their labours.

- However, the wide variations in types of techniques used in these studies make it difficult to say specifically what might help women.

 

Background

Pulmonary tuberculosis is usually diagnosed when symptomatic individuals seek care at healthcare facilities, and healthcare workers have a minimal role in promoting health-seeking behaviour. However, some policy specialists believe the healthcare system could be more active in tuberculosis diagnosis to increase tuberculosis case detection.

 

Key findings

- Tuberculosis outreach screening (with and without health promotion) to encourage presumptive tuberculosis patients to attend healthcare services may increase tuberculosis case detection in settings where the prevalence of undiagnosed tuberculosis disease is high.
Regular tuberculosis diagnostic outreach clinics may increase tuberculosis case detection.
- There is insufficient evidence to determine if sustained improvements in case detection impact on long-term tuberculosis prevalence, as the only controlled study to evaluate this found no effect after four years of contact tracing plus intensive health promotion intervention.