LEFTIES DON'T DIE ANY EARLIER, NEW RESEARCH SHOWS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 14, 1993                   TAG: 9302140158
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: BOSTON                                LENGTH: Medium
LEFTIES DON'T DIE ANY EARLIER, NEW RESEARCH SHOWS
Contrary to the conclusion of a highly publicized report two years ago, left-handers do not die at an earlier age than right-handed people, researchers at Harvard and the National Institute of Aging said Friday.
The researchers studied 3,800 people in East Boston over the age of 65 for six years and found that the two groups, righties and lefties, died at exactly the same rate.
"There was no difference, period," said Dr. Jack M. Guralnik, an epidemiologist at NIA and one of the co-authors of the report appearing in the February issue of the Journal of the American Public Health Association.
"Unfortunately, far too much attention has been paid to flawed and unsubstantiated claims about the higher risk of mortality among lefties, and many people have been unnecessarily frightened," added his colleague, Dr. Marcel E. Salive of NIA.
The new results should put an end to the idea that lefties have a higher risk of death "once and for all," said epidemiologist Ralph D'Agostino of Boston University.
The idea that left-handers are at higher risk of death has been promoted most vigorously by psychologists Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and Diane F. Halpern of California State University, San Bernardino. They reported in early 1991 on a study of nearly 1,000 people who died in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
They found that the average age of right-handers at death was 75, while that of left-handers was 66. The left-handers were also more likely to die of accidents.
Coren and Halpern attributed much of the dramatic increase in accidental deaths to the fact that most machines are designed for right-handers. Certain neurological and immunological defects often associated with left-handedness were also thought to play a role in the shortened life spans.
Later researchers have strongly criticized Coren and Halpern's interpretation of their data. The most common criticism was that the population of lefties they examined was younger than the population of righties. Because of that, epidemiologists said, the expected average age of death had to be younger.
Furthermore, the fact that lefties were more likely to die from accidents simply reflected the fact that younger people are more likely to have accidents.
Those earlier publicized results "say nothing about the reasons for the deaths," Guralnik said Friday.
The nub of the contradiction is that left-handedness shows a peculiar age distribution in the United States. In the population at large, 9 percent of women and 13 percent of men are left-handed, but the numbers decline with age.
For instance, at the age of 10, 15 percent of the population is left-handed. By age 50, the figure drops to 5 percent. And by 80, it is less than 1 percent.
Halpern and Coren argue that this distribution arises because left-handers die earlier. Most researchers, however, believe it is the result of the widespread effort by parents early in this century to convert natural left-handers into more socially acceptable right-handers.
Coren and Halpern could not be reached. Coren is to update his results here Monday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB