Oral glycerol therapy prevents severe neurological sequelae in patients with childhood meningitis. Safety, availability, low cost, and oral administration also add to its usefulness, especially in resource-limited settings.

Short-course, high-dose outpatient antibiotic therapy appears promising as an intervention to minimize the impact of antibiotic use on the spread of drug-resistant pneumococci.

A post hoc analysis of 654 children with bacterial meningitis showed that the level of consciousness is the most important predictor of death and/or neurological sequelae, more than is etiology per se. This finding emphasizes the need of including a measurement of the presenting status in all studies examining treatment efficacy.

Concentrations of serum anti-Haemophilus influenzae type b (anti-Hib) capsular polysaccharide (CPS) >/=0.15 and >/=1.0 microgram/mL are widely used as surrogates for protection against invasive Hib disease. However, the relationship between serum anti-Hib CPS following immunization and protection against colonization is not known, making it difficult to evaluate new Hib vaccines or combination vaccines. In the Dominican Republic, nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from 546 9-month-old infants who had received Hib conjugate vaccine at ages 2, 4, and 6 months and from 600 unvaccinated infants of the same age. The prevalence of Hib colonization was lower among vaccinated infants than among unvaccinated infants (0.9% vs. 2.3%). Among vaccinated infants, protection against colonization was significantly correlated with anti-Hib CPS concentrations >/=5 microgram/mL 1 month following the third dose of vaccine. These results suggest that the concentration of serum anti-Hib CPS needed for protection against colonization is greater than that needed for protection for invasive disease.

A B S T R AC TThis paper analyses how social support enhances family resilience in kinship foster families by involving the families in an educational group programme. Sixty-two kinship foster families from Spain participated in the research. The data were collected before the programme (interviews) and after the programme (interviews and focus groups), and it was analysed by content analysis with the program Atlas.ti. The results show that the factors that contribute most to the development of family resilience are (i) feeling able to look for solutions when faced with problems; (ii) an increase of their network of formal support; (iii) being able to offer support to other foster families; and (iv) feeling that the support they give to parents' foster children is socially recognized.