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

FDA Advises Caution on Antidepressant Use

Patients young and old on certain antidepressants should be monitored closely when beginning treatment or changing dosages, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advises in a public health advisory issued Monday.

The agency says it has been monitoring antidepressant research closely since a study released in June 2003 suggested an increased risk of suicidal tendencies among children who took Paxil (paroxetine). The FDA says it has yet to determine conclusively whether there's a link between suicidal thoughts and the class of drugs known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), which, besides Paxil, includes Prozac and Zoloft. The agency suggests that while it conducts a review of these and related drugs, doctors, caregivers and family members should closely monitor patients for worsening depression and suicidal thinking.

Specific attention should be paid to warning signs, including increased anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, and akathisia (severe restlessness), the agency says. And doctors should be vigilant in monitoring patients with bipolar disorder, sometimes referred to as manic depression, according to the FDA.

On Feb. 2, an FDA expert panel recommended that labeling on SSRIs should be changed to draw attention to the need to monitor patients more carefully.

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Pesticide Ban Leads to More Normal Babies

Pregnant women who were heavily exposed to two pesticides in a pair of New York City neighborhoods are having babies who are more normal in size again now that the pesticides have been banned, The New York Times reports of a Columbia University study.

School researchers say women in Manhattan's Harlem and Washington Heights areas were having significantly smaller babies before the bans on the pesticides chlorpyrifos and diazinon. These infants, on average, were 6.6 ounces lighter and one-third of an inch shorter than infants born to women who had no traces of either insecticide in their blood, the researchers say.

Study director Dr. Frederica Perera tells the newspaper that the results are significant because birthweight tends to be a good predictor of physical and mental development later in life.

The two pesticides, once abundant in over-the-counter insecticides and in products used by professional exterminators, were banned in stages for indoor use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency beginning in 2000. Total indoor bans on both pesticides didn't take place until the end of 2002, the newspaper says.

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New Bird Flu Outbreaks in Indonesia, South Korea

While reported cases of avian (bird) flu have been ebbing in countries such as China and Thailand, new outbreaks in Indonesia and South Korea show the health threat is far from over, a United Nations agency says.

South Korea announced it was culling 400,000 more chickens and ducks after confirming the first new bird flu infections there in six weeks, the Associated Press reports. So far, the country has found 19 farms hit by the disease, and more than 5 million fowl have been killed there in an attempt to stop the outbreaks.

In Indonesia, government resources are being stretched thin as new outbreaks are being reported in southern Sumatra and West Kalimantan, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says. And the disease is strongly suspected in four more areas.

Indonesia had been criticized for waiting months before acknowledging its bird flu outbreaks; it has since culled an estimated 2.5 million chickens, the AP reports.

The severe strain of bird flu that has affected at least eight Asian countries has jumped to humans in Vietnam and Thailand, killing at least 24 people.

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Canada to Allow Pharmacies to Sell Pot

Canada plans to make government-certified marijuana available in local pharmacies for medical use without a doctor's prescription, a move that would make Canada the second country in the world to allow the direct sale of medical marijuana.

Officials are organizing a pilot project in British Columbia, modeled on a year-old program in the Netherlands, the Associated Press reports.

There are only 78 medical users in Canada who are permitted to buy government marijuana, which is grown in Flin Flon, Manitoba. A 30-gram (about an ounce) bag of dried buds, sells for $113 each, and are sent by courier directly to patients or to their doctors.

But the department is changing the regulations to allow participating pharmacies to stock marijuana for sale to approved patients without a doctor's prescription, similar to regulations governing the "morning-after" pills, emergency contraceptives that can be obtained directly from a pharmacist without the need for a doctor's signature.

A notice of the change is expected to be made public this spring, allowing for drugstore distribution later in the year. The Canadian government has also suggested it may decriminalize pot, a move that has been criticized by U.S. drug and border agencies.

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Carbon Dioxide Hits Record Levels, Scientists Warn

Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year.

That's the word from scientists monitoring the sky from a 2-mile-high station atop a Hawaiian volcano. But the reason why remains unclear, according to the Associated Press.

Carbon dioxide, mostly from burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space. Global temperatures increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored by world governments have concluded that most of the warming probably was due to greenhouse gases.

Average readings at the 11,141-foot Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii, where carbon dioxide density peaks each northern winter, hovered around 379 parts per million on Friday, compared with about 376 a year ago. That year-to-year increase of about 3 parts per million is considerably higher than the average annual increase of 1.8 parts per million over the past decade, and markedly more accelerated than the 1-part-per-million annual increase recorded a half-century ago, when observations were first made, the wire service reports.

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Mad Cow Feed Traced to 2 Canadian Mills

Canadian officials have traced to two mills the feed that probably caused North America's two cases of mad cow disease, one in Canada last May and the other in the United States in December.

The feed from the Canadian mills, which cannot be identified under Canadian law, could have contained infectious protein from imported British cattle, Dr. George Luterbach, an official working with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, told the Associated Press.

Canada reported a single case of mad-cow disease in a farm in Alberta; the United States followed with an announcement that a cow in Mabton, Wash., had the disease. Both animals had been raised on farms in Alberta, and both ate feed containing meat and bone meal while they were calves.

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