Health Report: Apr. 11, 1994

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THE GOOD NEWS

-- Doctors have found evidence that gene therapy could help people who are suffering from extremely high levels of cholesterol in their blood. Two years after implanting a 30-year-old woman's liver with the gene that she lacks to get rid of the fatty substance, they report that the so-called bad cholesterol in her blood has dropped dramatically.

-- A study of 2,300 patients showed that giving a shot of magnesium sulfate within three hours of a heart attack may prolong a person's life by a few years. The timing is critical, however, as there was no beneficial effect in those cases where doctors waited eight hours or more to administer the drug.

THE BAD NEWS

-- By the end of the 1990s, according to the Orphan Project of New York City, more than 80,000 otherwise healthy children in the U.S. will have lost their mother to AIDS. In most cases the fathers have already died or are absent. Hardest hit: children in New York City; Washington; Miami; Los Angeles; Newark, New Jersey; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

-- A 20-year study of Canadian utility workers found a slightly elevated risk of leukemia among employees who had the greatest exposure to magnetic fields. One of the most comprehensive studies to explore a possible link between electric power lines and cancer, the investigation did not uncover a tie to brain tumors.

[TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Sources: GOOD: Nature Genetics, Lancet}]BAD: The Orphan Project, American Journal of Epidemiology