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Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

5 Million U.S. Children Added to Public Health Insurance Rolls

Some 5 million children in the United States have been added to the public insurance rolls since 2001, a new study found.

In many cases, the changes were made because the children's parents lost employer-sponsored health coverage, according to the Center for Studying Health System Change, a private research firm in Washington, D.C.

According to an analysis of the research by the Associated Press, 63.4 percent of Americans were insured by their employers in 2003, down from 67 percent two years earlier. The research group cited the national economic downturn as a primary factor.

A separate Urban Institute report released Tuesday highlighted the problems faced by uninsured children, including the fact that half of children who weren't covered by insurance last year didn't get a medical checkup, the AP reported.

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Bogus Cancer Cures Put Thousands at Risk: Study

Bogus alternative therapies peddled on the Internet are putting thousands of cancer patients at risk, a leading British scientist concluded in a new study.

"If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is," Professor Edzard Ernst of Exeter University's Peninsula Medical School told the Guardian newspaper. He warned that patients who research treatments via the Internet need to exercise great caution.

Of 32 popular Web sites he analyzed, 118 unproven "cures" for cancer were recommended, Ernst said. Even more troubling, he noted, three Web sites discouraged patients from using conventional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy, the Guardian reported.

Two popular examples of bogus cures included shark cartilage and laetrile, a chemical derived from the pits of certain fruits. There is "not a shred of evidence," that either of these substances helps cancer patients, Ernst told the newspaper.

Some products peddled as cancer cures, though produced by nature, can be dangerous, he said. "Not everything that is natural is risk-free," Ernst warned.

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45 Percent of Ear-Nose-Throat Docs Made Recent Error: Poll

Forty-five percent of ear-nose-and-throat doctors (otolaryngologists) who responded to a recent survey admitted to making a medical error during the prior six months.

Technical errors during surgery accounted for 19 percent of the mistakes, followed by medication errors (14 percent) and testing errors (10 percent), according to survey author Dr. David Roberson at Children's Hospital Boston.

Younger doctors were more likely than physicians over age 50 to report such errors, according to a statement released by the hospital.

The statement said Roberson believes the percentage of otolaryngologists who had admitted to a recent medical error is an underestimate. His research appears in the August issue of the journal Laryngoscope.

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Report: Swimming Pools Harbor Unwelcome Germs

Many public pools in the United States are breeding grounds for germs, causing a growing number of Americans to get sick each year.

Reports of pool-related germ outbreaks -- causing primarily bouts of diarrhea -- rose from two in 1986 to 21 in 2000, according to the most recent federal statistics. While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't track how many people were affected in those outbreaks, it does know that most of the 16,800 confirmed illnesses in the 1990s linked to outbreaks in recreational waters occurred in swimming pools and spas, according to the Associated Press.

"There are definitely a lot more cases that are not being reported. We believe some of the biggest outbreaks are in pools," said Michael Beach, an epidemiologist with the CDC's Division of Parasitic Diseases.

Federal health officials ask that pool operators and swimmers do more to prevent the spread of disease. Recommended steps include regular water inspections. And swimmers are urged to stay out of a pool if they have diarrhea, the AP said.

Contaminated pools can harbor a host of water-borne illnesses, including giardia, E. coli, shigella, and cryptosporidium, Joan Rose, a microbiologist at Michigan State University, told the news service.

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Many Heart Patients Don't Get Drugs They Need

Potentially lifesaving drugs to treat heart failure aren't being prescribed often enough, a new study finds.

Nearly one-third of heart-failure patients aren't getting angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and therefore face a higher risk of dying, according to the study in the Aug. 3 issue of Circulation.

Clinical trials have demonstrated the benefits of ACE inhibitors, which work by blocking the effects of angiotensin, an enzyme that causes blood vessels to tighten. ACE inhibitors relax blood vessels, lowering blood pressure and increasing the supply of blood and oxygen to the heart.

To gauge how well clinical trial results were being translated into practice, the study authors looked at records on 17,456 Medicare patients who had heart failure and left ventricular systolic dysfunction. The people were treated either during the period April 1998 to March 1999 or July 2000 to June 2001, according to HealthDay.

Sixty-eight percent of the patients were discharged from a hospital with a prescription for an ACE inhibitor, meaning 32 percent were sent home without a prescription, the study found.

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FDA Approves New AIDS Drugs

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Monday the approval of two "fixed-dose combination drug treatments" for HIV/AIDS.

HIV/AIDS therapy generally requires simultaneous use of three or more drugs from different classes. Combination products bring together different HIV/AIDS drugs in a single medication or co-package, and help make treatment regimens less complicated for patients to follow, the FDA said.

The new drug treatments are Epzicom (abacavir/lamivudine), manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline; and Truvada (tenofovir disoproxil/emtricitabine), which is made by Gilead Sciences, Inc., the agency said.

"Simplifying treatment regimens by reducing the number of pills and times per day patients need to take them provides significant public health benefits," said Dr. Lester M. Crawford, acting FDA Commissioner.

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