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

Bacterial Pneumonia Vaccine May Thwart Viral Forms

A vaccine devised to combat bacterial pneumonia also appears to stem viral forms of the disease, indicating that the two types of infection may somehow be linked, researchers report in this week's online version of the journal Nature Medicine.

Tests on more than 37,000 South African children found that the bacterial vaccine also prevented 31 percent of viral pneumonia cases, according to an Associated Press account of the report.

The study indicated that forms of pneumonia once thought to be exclusively viral can actually be caused by a combination of bacteria and viruses, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the wire service.

The vaccine is made by Wyeth Vaccines, which also sponsored the research along with the World Health Organization. The same vaccine also appeared to protect against other bacterial illnesses including meningitis, blood infections, and ear infections, the AP reported.

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Is U.S. Exporting Dirty Air?

A British scientist says he's testing his theory that the United States may be responsible for rising cases of lung disease in the U.K. by exporting airborne pollution from the U.S. east coast, BBC News Online reported Monday.

Dr. Alastair Lewis from York University is leading a team of some 50 scientists who theorize that U.S. car and factory exhaust has created a steady plume of sooty particles that may be making the 5,000-mile drift to Western Europe, the network report said. His team will test the air in stages as it travels from the eastern United States across the Atlantic.

"Although we know that some of this pollution was produced locally in the U.K., we still don't know what the contribution was from other countries," Lewis told the BBC. "It's perfectly plausible that [the United States is] exporting air pollution to us. The predominant wind is from the southwest."

The scientists believe fossil fuel pollutants may be reacting with nitrogen in the air to form the unhealthy air mass. There's no word on when Lewis expects to report results.

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New Software Helps Docs Find Lung Growths

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved new software designed to help radiologists detect solid lung nodules from computed tomography (CT) scans.

The ImageChecker CT CAD software highlights areas of the image that appear to be solid nodules, which can be cancerous. The software, the first of its kind for use with CT chest exams, is manufactured by R2 Technology Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif.

In a statement, the FDA said approval was granted based on the review of 15 independent radiologists, who were able to detect significantly more solid lung nodules among 90 CT images analyzed with the software than without it.

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36 Million Working-Age People Have HIV, Report Says

An estimated 36.5 million people of working age now have HIV, and by next year the global work force will have lost as many as 28 million workers to AIDS since the start of the epidemic, according to a new report issued Sunday by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Geneva.

In the first global analysis of the impact of AIDS on the world's labor force, the ILO also estimated that 48 million workers will be lost by 2010 and 74 million by 2015 if there is no increased access to treatment. Those tolls would make the disease one of the biggest causes of mortality in the work world, Xinhuanet reported.

The new analysis of 50 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, along with two developed regions, showed that the majority of countries most affected are in Africa, where the regional average HIV prevalence among 15-to-49 year-olds is 7.7 percent.

"HIV/AIDS is not only a human crisis, it is a threat to sustainable global, social, and economic development," ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said in a statement.

The report, prepared on the basis of newly developed demographic and epidemiological data from the United Nations and other sources, will be presented at the international AIDS conference in Bangkok, which opened Sunday.

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World Health Experts Call for Routine HIV Testing

Top global health officials are calling for routine HIV testing in developing countries.

The current strategy of leaving it to patients to request an HIV test is not working in the developing world, where 90 percent of those infected with the AIDS virus have no idea they are carrying it, officials at the U.N. AIDS agency and the World Health Organization said.

The officials proposed that countries where HIV is widespread and where treatment is available should test routinely -- while allowing patients to opt out, according to an Associated Press report.

Their change in recommended policy came on the heels of a WHO report, also released Saturday, that showed only 14 percent, or 440,000 people, of the 6 million people infected with HIV in developing countries are getting immediate access to the medicine they need.

Both the policy change and the treatment record were released in Bangkok, where a week-long international AIDS conference opened Sunday with a call to action by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The conference, expected to attract 20,000 people from around the world, heard Annan challenge world leaders to do more to combat the raging global epidemic while warning that women are becoming the majority of its victims.

The WHO statistics are from a six-month progress report of the WHO's "three by five" program launched last December, which had a goal of having 3 million people on HIV treatment by the end of 2005, according to CNN. Funding for the program is also behind schedule: About $40 million has been raised, far lower than the six-month goal of $84 million.

The WHO report also showed that the cost of AIDS medicine has decreased to somewhere between $150 and $450 per person per year, but most developing countries can only afford to spend less than $1 per person per year on health care, CNN also reported.

The news follows release earlier this week of the UN's annual AIDS report, which showed that almost 5 million people became infected with HIV last year -- the largest number of new infections since the disease was discovered in 1981.

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Anthrax Cleanup Starts 3 Years Later

Almost three years after being hit by a deadly anthrax attack, the former headquarters building of a supermarket tabloid in Florida is being fumigated in an attempt to eradicate the deadly spores.

The cleanup started Sunday and is expected to last 24 to 36 hours. It follows months of planning and rancor over the fate of the American Media Inc. building in Boca Raton, the Associated Press reported.

Chlorine dioxide, a chemical used to disinfect drinking water and treat fruits and vegetables, will be pumped into the building to kill the anthrax spores, which have spread throughout its 65,000 square feet.

The cleanup is being led by BioONE, a company co-established by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

The arrival of anthrax in the mail at the building in October 2001 was the first in a series of still-unsolved attacks that killed five people.

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