Health Highlights: March 3, 2008

The study included 36 healthy, but sedentary, young people who reported persistent fatigue but hadn't been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome,CBC Newsreported.

One group of volunteers did low-intensity aerobic exercise for 20 minutes three times a week for six weeks. Their energy levels increased by 20 percent and their fatigue levels decreased by 65 percent.

Another group that did moderate-intensity aerobic exercise for the same amount of time also experienced a 20 percent boost in energy levels but only a 49 percent drop in fatigue,CBC Newsreported.

"It could be that moderate-intensity aerobic exercise is too much for people who are already fatigued," study co-author Patrick O'Connor, co-director of the UGA Exercise Physiology Laboratory, said in a prepared statement. "And that might contribute to them not getting as great an improvement as they would have had they done the low-intensity exercise."

The findings are published in the February issue of the journalPsychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

-----

U.S. Disposes of Last of Its Original Smallpox Vaccine

America's oldest smallpox vaccine is no more.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced late last week that it had arranged for the elimination of the last of its 12 million doses of Dryvax, the vaccine that was largely responsible for eliminating the worldwide scourge of a disease that killed millions of people in the 1700s and 1800s.

TheAssociated Pressreported that Dryvax, developed by the pharmaceutical company Wyeth in the late 1800s, was actually used quite recently -- in 2003 -- to help stem an outbreak of monkey pox in the United States. The last case of human smallpox was reported in Somalia in 1977.

No one in the United States gets smallpox vaccinations anymore, but because of concern about biological terrorism, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved replacing Dryvax with more than 200 million doses of a vaccine known as ACAM2000, made by Acambis Inc. of Cambridge, England, the wire service reported.

Despite its effectiveness, Dryvax had its problems, theAPreported, with evidence of heart attacks and heart inflammation in some cases.