Health Report

THE GOOD NEWS

-- One in four children born to women who harbor the AIDS virus becomes infected while still in the womb. However, a federally funded study has shown ; that mothers who take AZT after their 14th week of pregnancy reduce to 8% the risk of transmitting the virus to their babies.

-- A blood-pressure drug may do double duty as a male contraceptive. Researchers at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island, New York, have discovered that nifedipine also disables the membrane of the sperm, preventing it from binding to an egg and fertilizing it. The effect is reversible and apparently does not cause impotence. Next step: figuring out if the drug will work as a contraceptive in all men, whether or not they suffer from high blood pressure.

THE BAD NEWS

-- The hantavirus, a rodent-borne killer that swept through the Four Corners area of the American Southwest last spring, has claimed its first life in the Northeast. Health officials have not yet determined how or when 22-year-old David Rosenberg of Rosyln, New York, became infected. Fifty-nine people have developed the infection so far; the disease, which is difficult to treat, is fatal 60% of the time.

-- Everyone knows that a woman who smokes during pregnancy may harm the fetus. It now appears that secondhand smoke can do the same. In tests on newborns, those whose mothers worked or lived with smokers had twice the level of nicotine-related compounds in their system as those whose mothers lived in a smoke-free setting.

Sources-Good: National Institutes of Health; North Shore University Hospital. BAD: New York State Health Department; Journal of the American Medical Association.