Kieran Lamb's List: The Independent Health News 02/09

There is a story told by NHS nurses about a man who turned up at accident and emergency walking in a strange manner and telling a confused tale.

It transpired that he suffered from constipation, and had been advised to take a boiled egg. Misunderstanding the advice, he took the egg as close as was possible to the problem afflicting him.

The voracious Cimex lectularius, scourge of sleepers for centuries, has returned to Britain's hotels. Martin Hickman reports on a plague in a mattress near you

Obesity was cited as cause of death in 1,200 cases in 2007, an increase of more than a third in just five years. Experts say the true number is much higher

Cancer tests that could save the lives of scores of young women are set to return, five years after they were cut amid controversy, health chiefs confirmed yesterday. Ministers are considering the return of cervical cancer screening for women under 25, after having restricted the tests to older women.

The Government raised the age for routine smear tests from 20 to 25 in 2004, after a study by Cancer Research UK, Britain's largest cancer charity, found that the incidence of the disease in teenage girls was very rare.

Seven of the biggest chains are making their menus healthier by reducing fat and salt in snacks and drinks

Coffee shops across the UK will have to review their entire product range and reformulate recipes where possible to create healthier snacks and drinks

Britain's biggest coffee shops have promised to take salt and fat out of sandwiches and cakes eaten by tens of millions of customers as part of a new campaign against junk food launched today.

A woman whose battle to be prescribed Herceptin paved the way for thousands of others to access the breast cancer drug has finally succumbed to the disease.

Ann Marie Rogers won a landmark legal victory in 2006 against Swindon primary care trust, which had refused to give her the life-prolonging drug. Her son, Lee Woodrough, said yesterday the family was "devastated" by her death but would always be "immensely proud of her bravery in fighting for the right to the treatment". Ms Rogers died at home on Monday, aged 57.

A common gastric virus may trigger diabetes, scientists have found, raising hopes that a vaccine can be developed.

Two separate teams of British researchers found strong evidence that enterovirus infection can trigger the immune reaction which leads to insulin-dependent diabetes. There was also a suggestion that viral infection may be involved in Type 2 diabetes, although how is not clear.

The Government should abolish prescription charges for all patients in England as the current system is unfair on many people, doctors' leaders said today.

The British Medical Association (BMA) said the Department of Health (DoH) should follow the examples of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where prescriptions are either free or will become so in the next couple of years.

Child obesity is being tackled by changing the behaviour of parents in a scheme that could trim pounds off NHS costs

Cutbacks in the number of health visitors mean that the days when every mother received dedicated postnatal care are long gone. But, asks Daloni Carlisle, will latest moves succeed in reversing this trend?

NHS accused of relying on charities to plug funding gap, leaving patients facing postcode lottery

Women in strained marriages more likely to be seriously ill, says study

Married, ladies? Best check your blood pressure. Women in strained relationships are more likely to be overweight, have high blood pressure and suffer from the signs of "metabolic syndrome" – a range of risk factors that can lead to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Children who watch television for more than two hours a day have twice the risk of developing asthma, British researchers reported today.

Asthma affects more than 300 million people worldwide and is the most common children's chronic illness. Symptoms include wheezing, shortness of breath, coughing and chest tightness.

Parents will be told that over-the-counter cough and cold medicines do not work on children under 12, and can even cause side-effects like hallucinations.

A review of remedies such as Lemsip, Day Nurse and Sudafed by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) found "no robust evidence that these medicines work" in children.

Almost 80 per cent of Britons prefer a good night's sleep to sex, a survey has revealed.

Researchers from the Edinburgh Sleep Centre also found seven out of 10 have trouble sleeping and almost a quarter said they suffered from insomnia. The study of more than 8,500 people revealed 79.2 per cent admitted they preferred the thought of extra sleep to sex.

Attempts to halve teenage pregnancy rates by next year look on course to fail after figures yesterday showed a rise for the first time in five years. The number of pregnancies in girls under 16 increased from 7,826 in 2006 to 8,196 in 2007. Nearly three-quarters of these pregnancies were in 15-year-old girls.

Doctors have been asked to trace all babies in Britain who have been injected in the past month with the meningitis C vaccine which was recalled on Wednesday after it emerged that it may be contaminated with a microbe that can cause potentially fatal blood poisoning.

Hours after their six-year-old son Ivan died on Wednesday morning, David and Samantha Cameron asked well-wishers not to send them flowers. Instead, the couple said, donations should be sent to one of the many institutions which had helped Ivan, who suffered from a combination of severe epilepsy and cerebral palsy known as Ohtahara syndrome, throughout his brief and difficult life.

Wendy Richard bravely fought breast cancer twice before learning it had returned in an aggressive form and was terminal.

The actress who was 65 when she died, was diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1990s but managed to overcome it.

The cancer returned but Richard again managed to battle against the disease in 2002.

Health officials have been forced to withdraw 21,000 doses of the meningitis C vaccine from GP clinics around the UK after it emerged that some doses may have been contaminated with a blood-poisoning bacterium.

More than 60,000 doses of the vaccine, which is offered to all four-month-old babies, could be contaminated with the hospital-acquired infection – the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium – and a third of these had already been sent to vaccination clinics before officials became aware of the problem.