Prevention of upper respiratory tract infections by gargling: a randomized trial.

Background: Gargling to wash the throat is commonly performed in Japan, and people believe that such hygienic routine, especially with gargle medicine, prevents upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs). Its effectiveness, however, has not been established by clinical trials.

Design: Randomized controlled trial carried out in 2002-2003 winter season and analyzed in 2003 and 2004.

Multiphasic epidemiological analyses on smoking habits among undergraduate students in Japan.

Little is known about the prevalence and dynamics of smoking habits among university students in Japan, and their association with other lifestyle parameters and biological markers. Data on undergraduate students were here extracted from the questionnaire and laboratory tests of the periodic health checkup of Kyoto University in 2000 and 2001. In addition to simple statistics, longitudinal analyses were performed using logistic regression, and the odds ratio (OR) and its 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated for each item.