Health Report

By Janice M. Horowitz

THE GOOD NEWS

PROSTATE PILL New word on the prostate drug Proscar: besides relieving symptoms of a benign enlarged prostate, it can prevent future complications (like serious urinary-flow problems) or the need for surgery.

BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT Pregnant women probably needn't fret about antidepressants. Patients taking the newer kinds, like Paxil and Zoloft, don't seem to have any more miscarriages or babies with birth defects than those on a placebo.

GROW YOUR OWN Doctors have grown new coronary blood vessels by injecting the heart with a bioengineered protein. Significance? One day the technique may be used to skirt blocked arteries.

Sources: New England Journal of Medicine; Journal of the American Medical Association; Circulation

THE BAD NEWS

PLAYING CHICKEN A consumer group charges that fully two-thirds of chickens sold today are contaminated with campylobacter bacteria--a major cause of food poisoning. The government doesn't even check for it.

OUTBREAK The emergence in hospitals of drug-resistant staph infections was alarming enough. But now a study shows that kids are getting infected outside the confines of the hospital--a whopping 25 times as many today as in the late '80s.

PNEUMONIA AFTERMATH Adults who had pneumonia as kids are more likely to have small lungs. Problem: by old age they can wind up with shortness of breath and wheezing.

Sources: Consumers Union; Journal of the American Medical Association; New England Journal of Medicine

--By Janice M. Horowitz