Health Highlights: Sept. 22, 2007

The new study was done with mice, but "at the molecular level, ovarian biology is very similar in mice and humans," said Castrillon, senior author of the paper that is published in the September issue of the journalGenetics.

The findings might one day allow clinicians to test whether an infertile woman has problems with a specific gene, allowing for improved diagnostic tests and individualized therapy, said Castrillon, a specialist in the diagnosis of infertility and other diseases of women.

About 13 percent of women suffer from infertility, with the most common cause being dysfunction of the ovary. Researchers suspected genetic links in many cases, he said.

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FDA Urged to Ease Patient Restrictions for Heart Ablation Trials

Experts say the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should ease restrictions on which patients with a common heart condition called atrial fibrillation can be enrolled in clinical trials of devices used to provide a treatment called ablation,The New York Timesreported.

That was one of the suggestions offered Thursday by a panel of experts at a daylong meeting on clinical trials for treatments of atrial fibrillation, a nonfatal but distressing condition in which electrical shortcircuits in the upper chambers of the heart cause rapid, erratic contraction. The condition affects about 2.2 million Americans.

Ablation involves burning or freezing certain areas of the atrial muscle to either eliminate the source of the irregular pulses or to block the pathways they travel. This common method of treatment is used when drug therapy fails or causes intolerable side effects, theTimesreported.

"We have to be more flexible," Dr. Bram Zuckerman, director of the FDA's cardiovascular devices division, said in response to the expert panel's remarks about rapidly evolving technology for treating atrial fibrillation.

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Simplicity Recalls Cribs Linked to Deaths of 3 Babies

About one million Chinese-made cribs have been voluntarily recalled by Simplicity Inc. because problems with the drop rail can create a dangerous gap that poses a risk of suffocation and entrapment. The cribs have been linked to the deaths of at least three children in the United States, the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission said Friday.