Health Highlights: Oct. 11, 2008

Oct. 12 -- Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

100 South Africans Under Observation After Unidentified Fever Kills Three

An infection that may be related to the dangerous Ebola virus has killed three people in South Africa, and about 100 others who may have come into contact with the victims are under observation, BBC News reports.

A type of hemorrhagic fever is the suspected cause, BBC News says, of the deaths of a female Zambian tour guide and two medical people who treated her. The woman had been in South Africa for two days when she became ill.

The Associated Press quotes an official from the World Health Organization (WHO) as saying that tests had ruled out the most common forms of hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, and Marburg fever.

Because hemorrhagic fever strikes so quickly and is so contagious, South African health officials set up the monitoring of 100 people in Johannesburg to make sure no one else is ill. "The public at large are not at risk," intensive care specialist professor Guy Richards is quoted as saying.

Those under observation will have their temperatures taken four times daily for the next three weeks, BBC News reports. Symptoms include high fever, nausea and external bleeding.

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Pregnancy Doesn't Cause Memory Problems

There's no evidence to suggest that pregnancy affects a woman's cognitive abilities, says an Australian study that challenges the widespread belief that pregnant women suffer memory problems.

The Australian National University study included 2,500 women aged 20 to 24 when they were first interviewed in 1999. The 76 women who were pregnant in follow-up sessions in 2003 and 2007 scored the same on logic and memory tests as they did in the initial interview, Agence France-Presse reported.

In addition, there were no differences between the pregnant women and the other women.

"It really leaves the question open as to why (pregnant) women think they have poor memories when the best evidence we have is that they don't," study leader Professor Helen Christensen told AFP.