Health Report

THE GOOD NEWS

-- When coronary arteries are clogged, smaller arteries expand to take over some of the blood flow. A new drug, still unnamed, has been shown to enhance the process in dogs. If it works in humans, it could be a cheaper, safer alternative to standard bypass surgery or balloon angioplasty.

-- Nicotine gum, nasal sprays and patches have now been definitively proved effective in helping the motivated quit smoking.

-- Doctors now understand, after 40 years of using it, how one antituberculosis medication works: Isoniazid interferes with a protective coat around the TB bacillus. The discovery may lead to new medicines that could overcome drug-resistant forms of TB.

THE BAD NEWS

-- A link has appeared between silicone breast implants in mothers and digestive problems -- including vomiting and intestinal pain -- in the children they are nursing. The symptoms are not uncommon, but in a study of eight children whose mothers have implants, six suffered from ailments resulting from a problem in the lower esophagus that also affects some women with implants.

-- The first known case of human infection with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a cousin of AIDS-causing HIV, has been documented in a laboratory worker. No one knows whether the virus, which isn't fatal in monkeys, will be deadly to humans, harmless or somewhere in between.

Sources -- GOOD: American Heart Association; Lancet; Science. BAD: Journal of the American Medical Association; New England Journal of Medicine.