Your Health: Sep. 4, 2000

GOOD NEWS

HALE AND HEARTY Chalk up another one for women. A study of nearly 85,000 nurses shows that since 1980, coronary heart disease–the leading killer of women in the U.S.–has plummeted 30%. The decline is mostly attributable to better diet: women are eating less red meat and fewer high-fat dairy products while chowing down on more of the good stuff, like fiber. The fact that more of them have kicked the smoking habit helps too. That’s not to say the battle is over. Doctors report that if obesity were licked, heart disease would drop even further.

CHEERS! A medication used to quell nausea in cancer patients may reduce an alcoholic’s cravings. Research shows that after three months on the drug ondansetron, drinkers cut their booze intake from an average of eight glasses a day to just two. Caveat: on dansetron works only in those who became alcoholics before age 25–about 3.5 million people–probably because young drinkers tend to have a specific biological predisposition to the disease.

BAD NEWS

JUST DON’T SHOOT ME Though they are now a lot easier to tolerate than they were 25 years ago, rabies shots are still given too often. Nearly 40% of patients who undergo the series of five shots in the arm each year may not need them. (Once a dozen notoriously painful injections in the abdomen was standard treatment). Doctors, usually E.R. docs, go ahead with the shots even when rabies is so rare in a locale that it doesn’t pose any real threat. Other times, they don’t bother to determine if the offending animal is in fact infected.

–By Janice M. Horowitz

Sources–Good News: New England Journal of Medicine (8/24); Journal of the American Medical Association (8/23). Bad News–JAMA (8/23)