FINDINGS

Study: Heat to Worsen In Mediterranean Region

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Deadly heat waves around the Mediterranean, like those that killed some 18,000 people in 2003, could become the norm this century if trends in greenhouse emissions continue, researchers reported.

The number of dangerously hot days in the Mediterranean region that includes parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East could increase by 200 to 500 percent, they said yesterday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

France would have the biggest rise in extremely hot days, the study said. Paris would truly sizzle, with temperatures that occurred there during the killer heat wave of 2003 exceeded dozens of times each year.

But cutting greenhouse gas emissions could make the dangerously hot days as much as 50 percent less intense, the authors wrote in their analysis of climate simulations extending to 2099.

"Rare events today, like the 2003 heat wave in Europe, become much more common as greenhouse gas concentrations increase," Noah Diffenbaugh of Purdue University said in a statement. These temperatures "become the norm and the extreme events of the future are unprecedented in their severity," he said.

Meth Users Tend To Be Poor White Men

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Users of methamphetamine tend to be young, poor, white men, often with an incarcerated father, and use may be more common than previously estimates suggest, a new study found.

The findings, published yesterday in the journal Addiction, were based on interviews with 14,322 people, ages 18 to 26, in 2001 and 2002. The study found that 2.8 percent had used the drug, often called "crystal meth," in the past year, and 1.3 percent used it in the past month.

Officials of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funded the study, said that rate is higher than in other studies. A 2004 survey showed use among Americans ages 19 to 28 at 1.5 percent in the previous year.

The survey found that meth users were heavily white, although American Indians had high usage rates.

Children's Vaccine To Carry Warning

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The label for Merck's rotavirus vaccine will be revised to include eight reports of Kawasaki disease in some children who received the oral vaccination, health officials said yesterday.

The Food and Drug Administration said doctors and parents should "remain confident" in the RotaTeq vaccine. The number of cases did not exceed what would be expected for young children who were not vaccinated, the FDA said.

Kawasaki disease is a serious but uncommon illness in children that causes high fever and blood-vessel inflammation. The FDA said about 4,000 U.S. children, about 80 percent under age 5, develop it each year. The cause is unknown.

Rotavirus can cause severe infant diarrhea that requires hospitalization. The virus is a major killer of children in developing countries, but deaths in the United States are rare.

About 6 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed.

-- From News Services