Are Viralizer Claims More Than Hot Air?
Can the Viralizer System, a $35 hand-held device that delivers hot air and medicated spray into the nose or throat, spell fast relief for colds and allergy?
The manufacturer of the device, sold by phone and at local pharmacies, thinks so. In advertisements, Greenwich, Conn.-based Viral Response Systems Inc. claims that heat causes the common cold virus to “self-destruct” and that the heated medication kills secondary bacterial infections. “We have eliminated symptoms within one day,” said Robert Krauser, company president.
But according to Food and Drug Administration spokesman David Duarte, in 1983 the device “was cleared strictly as a hot-air or moisturized-air device without the use of additives.” Even though the medications used (a germicide and a decongestant) are FDA approved, “two plus two do not equal four,” Duarte said.
About two weeks ago, the agency asked the manufacturer to substantiate the claims, but has not yet received a reply, Duarte added.
Elliot Dick, professor of preventive medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with special expertise in respiratory virus research, is taking a wait-and-see approach to the so-called cold-buster. “It might work,” he said. “Their anecdotal results are spectacular.”
Painless Circumcision
Injecting the local anesthetic lidocaine reduces the distress of circumcision for newborns, researchers report in the March 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
In the study, 20 babies received lidocaine injections before circumcision; 20 received saline injections and 20 received no injection. During the injection period, the lidocaine- and saline-injected babies did not cry more than the babies who did not receive injections, the researchers report. And during the procedure itself, the lidocaine-injected group cried less than either the saline-treated babies or those who received no injection.
The technique, called dorsal penile nerve block or DPNB, is not new, the researchers point out. Surgeons have used it for postoperative pain relief for urological procedures and its use for routine circumcision dates back to 1978. Among the babies studied, DPNB resulted in no significant complications. Occasionally, minor bruising occurred at the injection site.
Still, the researchers note, physicians have been slow to adopt the technique. Those who don’t use it say they fear the shot itself may be stressful or add risk or that anesthetic use will drive up the rate of a procedure some experts view as unnecessary.
But to Dr. Karen Lamp, a family practice physician at Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center, using an anesthetic is a much better alternative than not.
