Your Health: Nov. 15, 1999

GOOD NEWS

MY HEAD, YOUR ARM Why would anyone take hair from a man's head and grow it on a woman's arm? To advance science--and maybe a new treatment for baldness. In a novel experiment, researchers removed patches of a man's scalp--hair, roots and follicles--and transplanted them onto the forearm of an unrelated woman. The patches took root and after more than two months showed no signs of rejection. This suggests it may someday be possible to cover bald spots with a full head of hair from someone with hair to spare.

WHEN YOU'RE OLDER With age comes wisdom, maturity...and a taste for spinach. A study of more than 300 women ages 21 to 84 found that sensitivity to the bitterness in such vegetables as broccoli and spinach wanes with age. The older women preferred sour fruits such as grapefruit and lemons and bitter beverages such as coffee and tea more often than their younger counterparts. So don't worry if your kids don't like broccoli. They probably will, eventually.

BAD NEWS

TOBACCO, THE GREAT UNEQUALIZER? Lighting up may be riskier if you're an older woman. Women over 60 who smoke are more than twice as likely to get lung cancer as same-age males. Why? Women may be more vulnerable to tobacco's carcinogens, they may inhale more of these carcinogens with each puff, or they simply may not be screened for lung cancer as vigilantly as men are.

GENE BLUES Gene therapy has been going through a rough patch lately. First, a young patient died in the middle of his gene-therapy trial. And last week the Washington Post reported that half a dozen heart patients have died while undergoing a different form of gene therapy. These patients were already desperately ill, however, and it's not clear that the treatments had anything to do with their death. Gene therapy shows great promise, but anyone who is considering it should know that it's still very experimental.

--By Alice Park

Sources--Good News: Nature (11/4/99); U.S. Department of Agriculture conference. Bad News: American College of Chest Physicians meeting; Washington Post (11/3/99)