This Week in PLoS Medicine: Cardiac risks in pneumonia patients; US food consumption; Rural hygiene; Scaling up global health

This week four new articles were published in PLoS Medicine, with three research articles and one magazine piece.

Vicente Corrales-Medina and colleagues conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis and report estimates of the risk of cardiac complications among patients with community-acquired pneumonia.

Using data from three surveys, Kiyah Duffey and Barry Popkin find that changes in eating/drinking occasions and portion size contribute the most to increases in daily total energy intake over a 30-year period in the US.

By observing handwashing behavior in 347 households from 50 villages across rural Bangladesh in 2007, Stephen Luby and colleagues find that both hand washing with soap or hand rinsing without soap before food preparation can reduce the burden of childhood diarrhea.

Drawing upon interviews with experts and a review of the literature, Gavin Yamey proposes a new framework for scaling up global health interventions.

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