Your Health

By Janice M. Horowitz

GOOD NEWS

BONING UP Women with osteoporosis may reduce the risk of spinal fracture by 50% with the drug raloxifene--one of the new alternatives to bone-building estrogen being prescribed to postmenopausal women. Not bad, considering that two months ago data suggested a remarkable side benefit to raloxifene: the drug may lower the risk of breast cancer as much as 70%.

BRING HOME THE BACON Given the serious shortage of human organs available for transplant, scientists have been hoping that parts harvested from pigs might suffice. One concern, however, has been whether a virus called Porcine Endogenous Retrovirus, which hides in pig DNA, could be transmitted to humans. Now comes reassuring news. In a study of 160 folks treated with live pig cells, not one became infected with the virus. Don't expect pig replacement parts anytime soon, though. Animal-to-human organ transplants are still years away.

BAD NEWS

PREGNANT PAUSE As if pregnant women don't have enough to worry about. A report shows that women whose thyroids don't produce enough hormone during pregnancy are four times as likely to have children who score at least 20 points below average on standard intelligence tests. A sluggish thyroid is easily treatable with medication. The surest way to know if you have the problem: get a blood test.

MAD WORLD Thinking of donating blood? Don't bother--in fact, you won't be allowed to--if you were in Britain for a total of six months or more between 1980 and 1996. U.S. health officials worry about the theoretical risk that blood could be contaminated with mad-cow disease. Theoretical, indeed. There's no evidence yet that the brain disease can be transmitted by a blood transfusion.

--By Janice M. Horowitz

Sources--Good News: Journal of the American Medical Association (8/18/99), Science (8/20/99); Bad News: New England Journal of Medicine (8/19/99); FDA