THURSDAY, April 24 (HealthDay News) -- The Internet offers a dizzying amount of health information -- whatever ails you, someone is sure to have posted something about it somewhere on the Web.

But all that information can lead to overload -- or worse. You might end up heeding the wrong voice and getting some fairly bad advice.

"There's a lot of quackery on the Web," said Don Powell, president and CEO of the American Institute for Preventive Medicine. "There's a lot of bias on the Web. The Web is just wrought with misinformation and badly dated information."

One good basic piece of advice is to stick to sites ending in ".edu," ".gov" or ".org," Powell said. That means the site is run by a school, a government agency or a nonprofit organization and is, therefore, less likely to push a biased point of view, unlike some ".com" -- or commercial -- sites.

Another good way to judge a site is to see whether it's been accredited, Powell said. He noted two groups that are active in certifying sites as accurate and up-to-date: URAC and Health on the Net (HON).

"We ask people when they look on the Web that they make sure the site is accredited," he said. "It's a good way to establish trustworthiness."

Web sites published by companies or individuals can contain some good advice, but health consumers need to be more discerning when using those sites, said Dr. Jim King, a family practice doctor in Selmer, Tenn., and president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

First, see who is paying for the information you are viewing. The ads supporting a site can be a hint to possible bias, King said. "It may be skewed one way or the other, based on their advertisements," he said.

Who owns the site also can be a clue. For example, is a pharmaceutical company presenting the information? "Clearly, there's a bias there toward using their own medicines," Powell said.

Powell also recommends that you double-check when the information was last updated. "Information is constantly changing in the health industry," he said. "You want to make sure it's accurate and up-to-date."

For example, a Web site recommending the use of ipecac to prompt vomiting after someone has ingested poison is running counter to the latest advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recently advised against it, Powell noted. And the guidelines for judging high blood pressure also were revised recently, and someone relying on outdated information could be in trouble and not know it.

The American Academy of Family Physicians provides a quick checklist that can help determine a site's value:

• Who wrote the information? Health-related Web sites often post information from other sources, and those original sources should be clearly stated.
• If a health-care professional didn't write the information, was it reviewed by a doctor or medical expert?
• If the information contains any statistics, do the numbers come from a reliable source?
• Does something on the Web site appear to be opinion rather than fact? If so, is the opinion from a qualified person or organization?

As a final test, King recommends taking yourself off-line to discuss what you've learned with your own doctor.

"Before you act on anything, bring it to your physician to look it over," he said. "You can educate your doctor about pages that have good data, and they have a chance to say, 'No, this isn't really accurate.' You can learn from each other."

King has seen the impact of the Internet's health information on his own practice, and it's generally been positive.

"It helps educate my patients and direct their questions," he said. "Under the constraints we have now, we [doctors] can't spend as much time with patients as we used to. This way, they can come in well-educated and ready to discuss their condition. At the end of the visit, I might also refer them to a Web site for more information."

Powell rattled off a list of things that medical Web sites are great for: helping consumers decide when they need to see a doctor; giving them information on selecting the right physician; showing them how to evaluate the treatment they receive; providing questions to ask about an invasive procedure or surgery.

But in the end, King said, your doctor is always going to be able to provide the best assessment of your health.

"I think the computer and the Internet is an excellent tool," he said. "But that's all it is. It doesn't take the place of the relationship between the physician and the patient. Don't think this can become a replacement for your health-care provider."

More information

To learn more about evaluating health information on the Internet, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

MONDAY, April 21 (HealthDay News) -- In hospitals and other health-care facilities with endemic methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), aggressive screening of health-care workers should be combined with other measures to help reduce infection rates, new research suggests.

The Swiss and South African authors, who reviewed data from 169 studies of 33,318 health-care workers in 37 countries, found that 4.6 percent of the workers carried MRSA, and, of these, 5.1 percent had clinical MRSA infections.

"Poor infection control practices were implicated in both acquisition and transmission of MRSA by personnel, but even good adherence to infection control -- including masks and hand hygiene -- did not entirely prevent transmission of MRSA from heavily colonized staff to patients," they wrote.

A recent review of MRSA outbreaks suggested that health-care worker screening should focus on those with symptoms of MRSA infection, but this approach would likely miss a large number of MRSA-infected workers with no symptoms, the review authors said.

"Screening of infected health-care workers only will likely miss a large number of asymptomatic personnel capable of transmitting MRSA to patients, since staphylococcal carriage is mainly dependent on whether the person is a nasal carrier (of MRSA)... Our search revealed 18 studies with proven, and 26 studies with likely, transmission to patients from (health-care workers) who were not clinically infected with MRSA," the authors wrote.

Screening of health-care workers should be conducted "irrespective of the presence of risk factors or pus-producing infections as part of pre-employment examination, or [especially during large MRSA outbreaks] even periodically and unannounced before a work shift," they said.

In addition, nose and throat samples should be taken with separate swabs, since MRSA eradication therapy differs depending on the location of the MRSA, the authors recommended.

They acknowledged that cost makes MRSA screening unfeasible in many health-care facilities but noted that close health-care worker surveillance is conducted in regions -- such as Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Western Australia -- with low MRSA prevalence.

"We recommend screening of health care workers during outbreak investigations and during early stages of an institutional epidemic when MRSA prevalence is still low or when a new MRSA strain is propagating rapidly. In settings with endemic MRSA or limited resources, priority should be given to staff in high risk units such as intensive care units, burn units, or surgical wards," the review authors wrote.

The review was expected to be published in the May issue of the The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about MRSA in health-care settings.

THURSDAY, April 17 (HealthDay News) -- Common job-related problems such as conflicts with bosses or co-workers are more likely than long hours, night shifts or job insecurity to cause poor sleep.

That's the conclusion of a study by University of Michigan researchers who analyzed data from two surveys of about 2,300 U.S. adults who were followed for up to a decade. During that time, about half of the participants said they had trouble sleeping.

"Together, work and sleep take up about two-thirds of every weekday. But until now, very little research has focused on the connections between work and sleep for the average U.S. worker," Sarah Burgard, an assistant professor of sociology and an assistant professor of epidemiology, said in a prepared statement.

In their analysis of the survey data, Burgard and graduate student Jennifer Ailshire found that work conditions affected sleep patterns, instead of the other way around. Respondents who frequently felt upset or bothered at work, or had ongoing conflicts with bosses or co-workers, were about 1.7 times more likely than others to experience sleep problems.

"Massive changes over the past half-century have reshaped the workplace, with major implications for sleep. For many workers, psychological stress has replaced physical hazards," Burgard said. "Physical strain at work tends to create physical fatigue and leads to restorative sleep, but psychological strain has the opposite effect, making it more difficult for people to sleep."

There was no evidence that long hours or working nights or weekends led to poor sleep quality.

The researchers did find that work-family conflicts and having children under the age of 3 were significant predictors of sleep problems. People with children under the age of 3 were about 2.2 times more likely to report poor sleep quality.

The study was presented April 17 at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, in New Orleans.

Burgard said she plans to examine how to protect workers from negative working conditions and how to prevent work problems from affecting sleep.

More information

The National Sleep Foundation offers advice on getting a good night's sleep  .

SUNDAY, April 6 (HealthDay News) -- Monkeys with lower social standing are more likely than dominant monkeys to choose cocaine over food when faced with a stressful situation, a new study finds.

The Wake Forest University School of Medicine researchers exposed four dominant and four subordinate male cynomolgus monkeys to a socially stressful situation. Each monkey was taken out of its home cage and placed in an unfamiliar cage surrounded by four unfamiliar animals. While the monkeys were physically safe, they could hear and see the aggressive behavior of the other monkeys.

PET scans of the monkeys' brains showed that the subordinate monkeys had pronounced decreased activity in areas of the brain involved with stress and anxiety (amygdala and hippocampus) and in emotional and social processing (anterior cingulate cortex). The dominant monkey showed increases in reward-related areas of the brain.

After being in an unfamiliar cage, the monkeys were given the opportunity to select between a lever that they knew delivered cocaine or one that delivered food. The subordinate monkeys were more likely than dominate monkeys to choose cocaine over food.

The study was to be presented Sunday at Experimental Biology 2008 in San Diego.

The findings may offer clues to the social context of drug use and addiction in humans, the researchers said.

"We believe this type of research can be used to identify better treatment strategies, including providing environmental enrichment, that may affect the likelihood of using drugs," Michael A. Nader, professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest, said in a prepared statement.

Nader noted that it's also important to understand distinct patterns of social stress-related brain activity that may increase attraction to cocaine in vulnerable people. Understanding these stress-related brain changes may also help in the development of treatment and prevention methods for people with disorders such as anxiety and depression that can be caused by chronic stress.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse has more about drug abuse and addiction.