STUDY TIES COCAINE TO HEART RISK

They are seemingly healthy young men, but they show up nonetheless at
emergency rooms across the country, complaining of severe chest pains.

Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at
Dallas say these puzzling cases can usually be explained by cocaine use,
documented as a primary cause of heart attacks in otherwise healthy adults
for nearly 20 years.

"The risk of acute myocardial infarction is increased by a factor of 24
during the 60 minutes after the use of cocaine in persons who are otherwise
at relatively low risk," says the study in a recent edition of The New
England Journal of Medicine.

Doctors Richard A. Lange and L. David Hillis, the authors of the study, say
emergency room personnel often do not suspect cocaine use as the underlying
cause of heart attacks in young patients.

The distinction is important because cocaine-induced chest pains are
treated differently than heart attacks from other causes, they say in their
review article. With increasing cocaine use, emergency departments need to
quickly recognize and treat these cases accordingly. American Heart
Association guidelines specify the differences in such treatments.Another
diabetes risk Women are almost three times as likely to die within four
years of having suffered a heart attack if they also suffer from diabetes,
warns a new study from Boston researchers in the medical journal Diabetes Care.

The findings are further evidence of the devastating effect diabetes can
have on a woman's cardiac system. Previous research determined diabetic
women are two to four times as likely to have a heart attack than women
without and they are twice as likely to die from it within 30 days.

The prospective report, which followed 1,935 heart-attack patients between
1989 and 1993, found that diabetic women were 2.7 times more likely to die
in the 3.7 years after the heart attack than nondiabetic women.

"In light of this, diabetic patients need aggressive treatment of cardiac
risk factors to prevent heart attacks," says Dr. Kenneth J. Mukamal, lead
author and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School.Some good
vibrations Low-level vibration can improve bone density, a new study says.

Scientists subjected the hind legs of adult sheep to 20 minutes of
low-level mechanical vibration five days a week. After a year, spongy bone
density in the sheep femurs had increased 34 percent compared with sheep
that did not receive the vibration.

The study, published in the current issue of the journal Nature, suggests
extremely small strains, such as those caused by muscle contraction while
maintaining posture, play a significant role in determining bone density.

The researchers also suggest that mechanical vibration might help
strengthen the bones of people suffering from osteoporosis.