Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies

Want a heart defibrillator at your house?

WASHINGTON - Defibrillators that jump-start a stopped heart may save lives in airports and malls, but few people keep them at home in case of collapse - even though that's where most cardiac arrests occur.

Now a manufacturer hopes to spur sales by making the devices as easy to buy as a fire extinguisher, asking the government to lift its requirement that at-home defibrillators be sold only with a doctor's prescription.

It's a controversial issue. Would in-home use of the machines, which cost almost $2,000, save many lives, or instead waste precious minutes if distraught relatives hunted the device instead of dialing 911 first?

"People would be better off spending the money on a health club membership," says Dr. Thomas H. Lee, a Harvard Medical School cardiologist and editor of the Harvard Heart Letter.

Philips Medical Systems, maker of the HeartStart home defibrillator, argues that consumers deserve to decide but physicians often won't prescribe the easy-to-use devices.

Next week, the Food and Drug Administration's scientific advisers will debate Philips' request for over-the-counter sales. FDA's chief concern is whether ordinary people can figure out proper use on their own.

Every year, about 220,000 Americans die of cardiac arrest, where the heart's electrical system goes haywire and heartbeat stops.

The American Heart Association is cautiously backing over-the-counter sales. It won't say how many homes really need a defibrillator, but has decided a prescription isn't necessary to use it properly.

The machine measures heartbeat and won't deliver a shock unless someone truly is in cardiac arrest. Step-by-step voice instructions guide users, and the machine chirps like a smoke alarm when the battery runs low.

Insurance seldom pays for the $1,995 machine today. Philips, which has sold 5,000 prescription at-home defibrillators since 2002, says the price probably would drop if it could sell more over the counter.

PHILADELPHIA - A year on powerful antibiotics did nothing to relieve the chronic health problems reported by Gulf War veterans, demolishing the theory that so-called Gulf War syndrome is caused by a bacterial infection, researchers say.

The bacterial-infection theory "is off the table at this point," said Joseph F. Collins, a VA Maryland Healthcare System researcher and one of the study's authors.

The study was done by the Department of Veterans Affairs and was published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Researchers have found that veterans of the Persian Gulf War in 1990 and 1991 are more likely to suffer from a range of chronic symptoms, including memory and thinking problems, debilitating fatigue, severe muscle and joint pain, depression, anxiety, insomnia, headaches and rashes. However, the cause has proved elusive.

Here's another reason to eat your veggies: A new study suggests certain vegetables like broccoli and spinach may help older women keep their brains sharper.

Researchers found that women in their 60s who ate more cruciferous and green leafy vegetables than other women went on to show less overall decline over time on tests measuring memory, verbal ability and attention.

Such foods include broccoli, cauliflower, romaine lettuce and spinach.

The federally funded study didn't include men, but the effect would probably appear in them too, said Jae Hee Kang, an instructor at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.