Research findings

Research findings

LONDON

Young children of women who, during pregnancy, lived near masts that transmit mobile-phone signals don’t have a higher risk of cancer, a British study has found.

Researchers from Imperial College London reviewed information on almost 7,000 children younger than 5, including 1,397 with cancer. They found no link between the mother’s exposure during pregnancy to a mobile-phone mast and the risk of cancers including leukemia and brain tumors, according to the study published recently in the British Medical Journal.

The study is the largest of its kind, and the findings should put any reports of cancer clusters around mobile-phone towers into context, the researchers wrote. Doctors should tell patients not to worry about living near masts, said John Bithell, an honorary research fellow with the Childhood Cancer Research Group at the University of Oxford.

Grape protection

Grapes reduce risk factors for heart disease and diabetes in rats, according to a University of Michigan Health System study. The findings were presented recently at the Experimental Biology convention in California.

Researchers took a group of rats prone to be overweight and fed them a typical high-fat American diet. Some rats were also fed a mixture of red, green and black grapes in powdered form.

After three months, the rats receiving the grape-enriched diet had lower blood pressure, better heart function and reduced indicators of inflammation than the rats receiving no grape powder. The grape-fed rats also had fewer symptoms of metabolic syndrome, a condition affecting about 50 million Americans and a precursor to type 2 diabetes.

University of Michigan plans to further its research this summer when it begins a clinical trial to test the impact of grape consumption on heart health.

Keep germs at bay

Here are five tips for avoiding germs when traveling:

Wash your hands constantly. Think for a moment how many things you touch on the plane or at the airport that are touched by someone else: boarding passes, coins, restroom door handles.

If you need a snack, go to the newspaper/magazine store and buy trail mix or dried fruit.

If someone on the plane near you clearly is sick, turn on the overhead air vent and point it their way.

Avoid the airline’s unhealthy, overpriced snack kit.

Don’t trust those ubiquitous miracle-cure potions for sale at the airport.

Combined dispatches