Health Highlights: Feb. 6, 2008

"Our research suggests that drinking beetroot juice, or consuming other nitrate-rich vegetables, might be a simple way to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system, and might also be an additional approach that one could take in the modern day battle against rising blood pressure," said study author Professor Amrita Ahluwalia.

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Overuse of Cotton Ear Swabs Led to Meningitis Death: Coroner

Stronger health warnings are needed for cotton ear swabs, says a Quebec coroner who concluded that overuse of the swabs led to the death of a Montreal man last year, theGlobe and Mailnewspaper reported.

Dr. Jacques Ramsay said overuse of cotton swabs and repeated rubbing likely led to an ear infection and perforated eardrum in 43-year-old Daniel St-Pierre. The infection in his outer ear migrated through the perforated eardrum into the inner ear and caused a fatal case of meningitis, an infection of the fluid around the spinal cord and brain, Ramsay said.

"Once you're in the inner ear, you're millimetres away from the meninges and the brain," Ramsay told theGlobe and Mail. "You just need one time to perforate your eardrum, and that opens the barrier and allows the infection to migrate."

While the likelihood of such cases is low, Ramsay wants Health Canada to put stronger product warnings on cotton swab products. He suggested the warning include a diagram of an ear with a red X through it.

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DNA From 3 People Used to Create Embryos

Human embryos that contain DNA from two women and one man have been created by British scientists who used a gene-swapping technique that could potentially help prevent a number of genetic diseases, theAssociated Pressreported.

The preliminary research may cause some people to worry about the creation of genetically modified babies, but the researchers said the embryos are still primarily the product of one woman and one man. There's just a bit of gene tweaking involved, they explained.

"We are not trying to alter genes, we're just trying to swap a small proportion of the bad ones for some good ones," researcher Patrick Chinnery, a professor of neurogenetics at Newcastle University, told theAP.