About one-third of children in pediatric intensive care units experience frightening delusions that stay with them for a longer time, a new study has found. Powerful hallucinations where children reported seeing various animals like cats and spiders were most common in children who had to be sedated for more than two days, and in youngsters who were admitted on an emergency basis.

According to a study in the first May issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, these delusional memories put the children at far higher risk of post traumatic stress disorder

The Virginia Department of Health said Monday that last year's report of 730 confirmed cases of rabies in animals were the highest since 1982 when the rabies reached 745 cases.

Most of the reported cases were in wild animals, the highest being the raccoons with 359 cases, skunks were second with 185 and foxes with 90. Also included were 36 cases of rabies in cats and five in dogs

Cats reduce stress in people's life and protect their owners from having a heart attack, a study suggests.

The 10-year study, done by the researchers at the Stroke Research Center at the University of Minnesota, involved 4,435 Americans, aged 30 to 75. Research shows that those who never had a cat had a 40 percent higher risk of having a heart attack and a 30 percent greater risk of death from other cardiovascular disease than compared to those who either have a cat or had cat before

A new study on the connection between a common parasite and schizophrenia has changed what the medical community previously thought was true. In what is being called the largest comparison of blood samples collected from healthy individuals to those people with schizophrenia, researchers announced Wednesday that their findings suggest that infection with the common Toxoplasma gondii parasite, carried by cats and farm animals, may increase the risk of schizophrenia.

The study was done on U.S. military personnel by researchers from Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Findings of the study appear in the January issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry

Scientists have moved a step closer to winning the battle against one of the most common human parasites, Toxoplasma gondii. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that the parasite uses a hormone from the plant world to decide when to grow and when to remain dormant.

Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite found in a variety of places. That includes contaminated kitchen surfaces or utensils that have come in contact with raw meat, drinking contaminated water, dirt in people's yards and the feces of cats that are infected and, more rarely, an infected organ transplant or blood transfusion