Health Tips

By Elizabeth Manning

REGULAR CHURCH GOERS LIVE LONGER: A new report published in the Journal of Gerontology adds evidence to previous findings that people who attend church every week live longer than those who attend more sporadically or not at all. Researchers at Duke University found that over a six-year-period, the church goers among the group of nearly 4,000 North Carolinians were 46 percent less likely to die. Lead investigator Harold Koenig says roughly half of the effect is due to the larger social network that religious people are likely to have. Good social support has been associated with good mental health, which can stave off the depression linked with heart disease, stroke, and other ailments. A larger social circle can also confer greater chance of early detection and treatment of an illness. Religious people also tend to have healthier lifestyles, and the act of worshiping itself may be a coping mechanism. The factors that account for the remaining 28 percent difference in mortality are not yet clear, says Koenig.

GENE THERAPY FOR OVARIAN CANCER: Doctors at the University of Kentucky's College of Medicine are commencing a Phase II clinical trial with patients whose ovarian cancer has spread elsewhere in the abdomen. Dr. Holly Gallion and her Lexington colleagues are testing whether delivering a healthy version of the gene whose mutation lead to the cancer will help the women fight their disease. All patients in the Kentucky study will receive the standard treatments of surgery and six months of chemotherapy. Half of the women will also receive the gene therapy, once a month for five consecutive days each. Gallion's group will administer the normal gene, called p53, through a catheter directly into the patients' abdomens. The gene is attached to a common cold virus, called an adenovirus, which ''infects'' the tumor cells and deposits the healthy p53 into the nucleus. Ovarian cancer is the most serious of all reproductive cancers in women, often because its vague symptoms -- a feeling of pressure or bloating around the pelvis, and changes in bowel or bladder habits -- make early detection difficult.

MORE GROUP HOMES, NOT NURSING HOMES: Between 10 and 50 percent of Americans living in a nursing home should not have to be there, say researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Many of these people would benefit from the lower costs, greater independence, and social advantages of living in a group home -- but less than 1 percent of seniors live in such a setting. Cornell professors Peter Chi and Joseph Laquatra are advocating that communities give their elderly members more options for their living situation. Chi says, ''Group housing offers tremendous advantages to older Americans, from companionship and affordability to assistance in daily chores.'' He and Laquatra used census data to analyze living arrangements of seniors in 816 metropolitan counties and 2,129 non-metropolitan counties. As they described at the European Network for Housing Research Conference in Cardiff, Wales, fewer seniors choose to live in nursing homes in counties were group housing is available.

WHAT EVERY MILLENNIUM BABY DESERVES: As the year 2000 draws closer, two pediatricians in London report that their study of clocks in delivery rooms reveals hospitals may be ill-prepared to properly record the birth of millennium babies. Their tongue-in-cheek investigation, published in the British Medical Journal, found that delivery-room clocks in their own hospital were slow by an average 93.6 seconds. Dr. Jonathan Round and Dr. Nigel Kennea investigated for there, findings that the clocks in a large teaching hospital ranged from four minutes 12 seconds slow to two minutes 25 seconds fast! They humorously warn that hospitals should be vigilant in coming months to ensure their delivery- room clocks are accurate for validating that first millennium baby.