A round-up of other health stories in brief.
MISCARRIAGE STUDY: Giving birth to a boy can significantly increase the risk of some women having subsequent miscarriages, a study has shown.
Scientists believe male genes can trigger an immune reaction that prevents later pregnancies in vulnerable women. Among a group of miscarriage sufferers who had previously given birth, the chances of having a second child were reduced by nearly two-thirds for those with a first-born boy.
Normally about 1 per cent of women experience recurrent miscarriages - defined as having three miscarriages one after the other. In a third of these cases, the woman involved had previously delivered a normal child.
Doctors at a fertility clinic in Denmark noticed they were treating an unusually high number of women with the problem whose first-born child had been a boy.
They decided to investigate the trend, and discovered a strong connection. Out of 305 women suffering unexplained recurrent miscarriages, 60 per cent had first-born children who were boys, rather than the expected 51 per cent. Of those who were successfully treated and had another baby, 56 per cent had first-born boys. But treatment was successful in 78 per cent of the women whose first born was a girl.
COFFEE MAY COUNTERACT ALCOHOL: Coffee may counteract alcohol's poisonous effects on the liver and help prevent cirrhosis, US researchers say.
In a study of more than 125,000 people, one cup of coffee per day cut the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis by 20 per cent. Four cups per day reduced the risk by 80 per cent.
The coffee effect held true for women and men of various ethnic backgrounds. It was unclear whether it was the caffeine or some other ingredient that provided the protection, said co-author Dr Arthur Klatsky of the Kaiser Permanente division of research in Oakland, California. But he added: "The way to avoid getting ill is not to drink a lot of coffee, but to cut down on the drinking of alcohol."
HEALTH QUALITY AGENCY: The interim Health Information and Quality Authority - the new agency being established by the Government to ensure world-class quality standards in the health services - has appointed Dr Tracey Cooper as its first chief executive.
Dr Cooper, a medical doctor, is currently deputy head and director of operations at the NHS clinical governance support team in the UK.
The agency is being established as part of the Government's health service reform programme. Its mandate is to ensure world-class information, quality and health technology assessment standards are applied in health and personal social services across the public, private and voluntary sectors.
ALZHEIMER'S AND DIET: Eating fewer calories may help prevent the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, according to new research. A study in mice suggested a lower-calorie diet could help trigger the production of a protein that protected the brain from the disease, said researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. In the study, mice in one group were permitted to eat as they wished, while the other group was fed 70 per cent of that amount. When the animals were killed six months later, researchers discovered the brains of the calorie-restricted mice held significantly higher levels of an anti-ageing protein, SIRT1.
This protein has been shown to curtail and reverse the production of plaque in the brain, a symptom of Alzheimer's disease.
MEN'S HEALTH DIRECTORY: A new all-Ireland men's health directory has been published by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland in association with the Men's Health Forum in Ireland. It is available at www.publichealth.ie