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Antibiotics don’t help infections, such as bronchitis, that are caused by viruses. But new research suggests that the public and doctors still have not embraced that message. In the study, 71% of patient visits for acute bronchitis led to an antibiotic prescription. The study covered the years 1996 through 2010. Bronchitis is an inflammation of the bronchial tubes in the lungs. It is almost always caused by a virus. The main symptom is coughing. “Acute” bronchitis means that symptoms have lasted less than 3 weeks. The study was published as a research letter in the journal JAMA. It was based on a national survey of doctors’ offices and hospital emergency rooms. The sampling was selected to represent the United States as a whole. During the 15 years covered, these facilities reported 3,153 visits for acute bronchitis.

If a particularly deadly flu virus spread worldwide, saving lives would require much faster vaccine development than occurred in the 2009 pandemic, a study finds. The new study used a computer simulation. Researchers looked at how quickly a deadly influenza A outbreak would spread in a metropolitan area similar to New York City. They assumed that 1,000 people would be infected at the start. Without vaccination, they found that about 48,000 people would die. During the 2009 pandemic, a vaccine was ready for use in 9 months. But in the computer model, vaccinating people after 9 months would reduce the death toll by only about 2,300. Deaths would be further reduced if the vaccine were developed much earlier. The 2009 pandemic was caused by a flu strain known as H1N1. That strain spread fast, but was relatively mild compared with past pandemics.