Stanford University scientists have found a new way to light up someone’s life. They use ordinary light to obtain images of organs and other structures inside the human body.
“This represents a whole new way of imaging, and applications of this technique may have a major effect on the detection and treatment of breast cancers, heart attacks and strokes,” said Dr. David Benaron, who is both a physician and an engineer.
Although you can’t see it with the naked eye, enough light passes through the body to be detected by sensitive instruments, he said. Instruments measure each particle or photon of light to determine what it ran into in the body, thereby producing images similar to ultrasound, which uses sound waves.
STUDY OF TRANSSEXUALS AFFIRMS HEART-RISK THEORY
Scientists have long speculated that the female sex hormone estrogen protects women against heart disease while the male sex hormone testosterone increases the risk of heart disease.
New evidence that sex hormones may play an important role in heart disease has been found by researchers at the Free University Hospital in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, who were treating transsexuals.
Administering testosterone to females who wanted to become males produced potentially damaging changes in their blood vessels that could cause deposits to form, Dr. Kees H. Polderman reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
POST-MENOPAUSAL WOMEN BEAR IN-VITO OFFSPRING
Women in their 50s and 60s can become pregnant if they are physically and mentally healthy, according to University of Southern California reproductive experts.
Among 14 women whose average age was 52.2 years, 9 became pregnant from in-vitro fertilization, Dr. Mark V. Sauer reported in the British medical journal The Lancet. The women were post-menopausal and were given hormone treatments to reactivate the function of their uteruses. The eggs were donated by younger women.
Two of the pregnancies failed, but three women have given birth and four are currently pregnant, Sauer said.
AMERICANS BACKSLIDING IN PREVENTATIVE CARE
After a promising start to improving healthy lifestyles, many Americans are beginning to backslide, a national survey has found.
Last year Americans gained more weight, ate more nutritionally unhealthy food and exercised less than they did the year before, according to the survey conducted by Louis Harris & Associates for Baxter International.
“The survey is a worrisome sign that we’re becoming careless about preventative health care,” said Baxter chairman and CEO Vernon R. Loucks.
HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS HELP DETER TEENAGE SMOKING
Participating in high school sports discourages teenagers from taking up smoking, a federal study has found. Athletes have greater self-confidence and they are exposed to more educational material about the harmful health effects of smoking, Dr. Luis G. Escobedo of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
BAD MOODS MARKEDLY IMPAIR ELDERS’ MEMORIES
The kind of mood an older person is in can dramatically reduce his or her ability to remember things, according to a team of New York researchers.
Studies of healthy elderly volunteers between the ages of 60 and 78 years showed that if they were anxious, depressed or withdrawn their memories were much poorer than when they were in upbeat moods.
Younger subjects showed no such memory loss with bad moods.
Treating depression, anxiety and withdrawal with mood-elevating drugs or psychotherapy could significantly improve memory in many elderly people, Dr. Dennis Deptula of the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
