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The flu vaccine is even less effective than health officials thought against the strain of influenza making most people sick this season. Getting the vaccine has reduced the risk of illness from the H3N2 strain of flu by only 18%, a new report says. The report comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Officials said earlier in the season that the vaccine was about 23% effective. Among children, the vaccine offers even less protection, about 15%, the CDC said. The nasal spray vaccine may not protect children at all. One particular strain of H3N2 is causing most cases of flu in the United States so far this season. This strain was first seen in March 2014, the CDC said. That was too late to be included in the vaccine for this year. In most years, the flu vaccine is 50% to 70% effective. HealthDay News wrote about the CDC report February 26. 

In a recent year, more than 450,000 Americans had a type of severe diarrhea that most often occurs in health-care facilities. But one-third of them had not been in a hospital or nursing home recently, a study found. About 29,000 of those who were infected died. The diarrhea was caused by Clostridium difficile (C. diff) bacteria. These infections are hard to cure. Researchers used information from 2011. They looked at C. diff infections in 10 states. Two-thirds of them occurred in hospitals and nursing homes. The other one-third occurred in the community. But 80% of the community patients had been to see a doctor or dentist recently. Most of them received antibiotics. C. diff bacteria are most likely to grow and produce toxins when antibiotics kill the normal, harmless bacteria in the intestine. The New England Journal of Medicine published the study.

Men who use a traditional Finnish sauna may be less likely than others to die from heart disease, a new study suggests. Most doctors now recommend that heart patients stay away from saunas because of the demands they place on the heart and blood vessels. A traditional Finnish sauna is dry and very hot. The new study included 2,300 middle-aged Finnish men. Researchers asked them questions about their sauna use, among other things. Then they kept track of the men for an average of 20 years. In that time, men who used a sauna twice a week or more had lower rates of sudden death, other heart-related death or stroke than those who used a sauna only once a week. Reductions in death risk ranged from 22% to 27% for those with 2 to 3 sauna sessions. Risk was 48% to 63% lower for men who used a sauna 4 to 7 times a week. Men who used a sauna more often also had lower overall death rates.