Capsules

SWEET SUCCESS

Of all the forms of venereal disease in the U.S., one of the most troublesome is that caused by the common herpes simplex virus. Comprising about 13% of VD cases, the contagious infection produces painful sores in the genital area and discomfort while urinating. It is particularly dangerous in women: during delivery it can be transmitted to the infant; it is also linked to cervical cancer. For years, doctors have searched for a cure. Now researchers at the University of Pennsylvania may have achieved that goal. In the Journal of the American Medical Association, Drs. Herbert Blough and Robert Giuntoli report testing a cream containing the sugar 2-deoxy-D-glucose on 36 women with genital herpes infections. Within four days, it cleared up symptoms in 90% of the women with first infections. For women with recurring infections, improvement was almost as dramatic. A next step: to see if this magic bullet works equally well in infected men.

MY SON, MY SON

According to medical folklore, one way of conceiving male babies is to restrict intercourse to specific days in the menstrual cycle. But which days? Now a study of Orthodox Jewish women at Jerusalem's Hebrew University has produced a clue. Tallying up the sex of 3,658 babies born to women who observed the Jewish practice of niddah, which forbids sexual relations during menstruation and for seven days thereafter, Epidemiologist Susan Harlap reports a surprising result in the New England Journal of Medicine: of the 145 babies born to women who resumed intercourse two days after ovulation, 65.5% were boys; normally the figure is about 50%. One theory: the vagina and cervix at that time of month are more hospitable to sperm containing male chromosomes.

RADICAL PREVENTION

Preventive surgery for breast cancer even before the disease is diagnosed? The idea sounds highly unpromising, but at least two surgeons are now performing such prophylactic mastectomies. Dr. Henry P. Leis Jr. of New York City limits the surgery to women who have already had one cancerous breast removed. In 17% of these patients, reports Medical World News, tissue examinations revealed undiagnosed cancer in the breast. Dr. Charles S. Rogers of Bay City, Mich., has taken the theory a step further by performing double mastectomies on women who had no apparent signs of the disease but were judged prone to cancer because of family history, breast tissue characteristics and other clues. The key question: Are women who take this drastic step better off than others who simply wait and see?

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