Health & Medicine
Health Watch: It May Be Time to Can the Cola; Hope for People Facing Blindness; More on the Breast Versus the Bottle
It May Be Time to Can the Cola
Women who drink cola-regular, decaffeinated, or diet-may be putting themselves at risk for osteoporosis. In a study published in this month's American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers looked at the diet and bone strength of more than 2,500 people and found that, in women, daily cola was linked to lower hip bone density. (No effect showed up in men.) The phosphoric acid, especially when it's not balanced by calcium-rich food, may prompt the body to pull calcium from the bones, theorizes study author Katherine Tucker, a nutritional epidemiologist at Tufts University. While the connection isn't proved, Tucker recommends that women not make cola a daily habit. - Katherine Hobson
Hope for People Facing Blindness
A new treatment for the wet form of age-related macular degeneration-a leading cause of vision loss in people over 50-appears to be a big improvement over the current therapy. The condition occurs when blood vessels in the eye grow abnormally and leak fluid into the central retina. Two studies in last week's New England Journal of Medicine found that 95 percent of patients given monthly injections of ranibizumab (Lucentis) into the eye to inhibit vessel growth retained their vision. That compared with about 60 percent of those given the usual therapy, which uses a laser to close off leaking vessels. And about one third of the Lucentis group actually experienced improvement; 5 percent of the control group did. "It's amazing to have something that helps this much," says study leader David Brown, a retinal specialist at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, whose research was funded by drug maker Genentech. But Lucentis costs some $2,000 per monthly injection. Avastin, a similar drug for colon cancer, is being studied and could provide a much cheaper alternative. - Deborah Kotz
More on the Breast Versus the Bottle
Breast-feeding protects babies against diarrhea, respiratory infections, and other illnesses. Mothers who are obese or diabetic, though, might have been steered to the bottle instead. Some research has suggested that their milk is more fattening-a problem for babies already genetically predisposed to lifelong weight problems. But a new study of more than 15,000 children shows that breast-feeding helps prevent obesity in kids with overweight or diabetic moms. "Breast-feeding is the first thing they can do" to protect their children, says lead study author Elizabeth Mayer-Davis, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of South Carolina-Columbia. The researchers looked at kids ages 9 to 14 and found that those breast-fed exclusively for the first nine months were 21 percent less likely than the bottle-fed group to be overweight as adolescents. When it comes to intelligence, however, breast-feeding doesn't seem to offer an edge. A study in last week's British Medical Journal found that nursing mothers tend to have kids with higher IQs because they have higher IQs themselves. - D.K.
This story appears in the October 16, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.