Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 9, 1994 TAG: 9406090056
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CHICAGO - Toddlers are injured in car crashes at far higher rates than infants, partly because they are more often improperly secured in safety seats, a study has found.
Toddlers also are involved in more crashes. Two-year-olds are in 43 percent more crashes than are infants and are properly restrained one-third less often, the study found.
The researchers looked at a national sample of crashes that involved children from infancy through age 14 in 1991 and 1992. The study concentrated solely on injuries, not deaths.
Two-, 3- and 4-year-olds had the second highest rate. As a group, they were injured 33 percent more often than were infants, whose injury rate of 2.9 per 1,000 was lowest among any age group.
The researchers said 76 percent of the infants were properly restrained, compared with 29 percent for 3-year-olds.
- Associated Press
Longer lives for sickle cell patients
BOSTON - The life expectancy of people with sickle cell anemia has increased dramatically over the past two decades, and half of victims now survive into their 50s and beyond, according to a study.
The work contradicts the widely held misconception that people with sickle cell rarely survive to adulthood.
The study didn't attempt to figure out what accounted for the improvement. However, the researchers speculated that recent advances since their figures were gathered may have lengthened survival still farther.
Sickle cell anemia is an inherited blood disease that occurs mostly among blacks. Victims' red blood cells are misshapen, reducing their ability to carry oxygen.
About 150 of every 100,000 blacks in the United States are born with this disease.
A review in 1973 found that victims' median survival was 14 years. The latest study found this has increased to 42 years for men and 48 for women.
The study, directed by Dr. Orah S. Platt of Children's Hospital in Boston, was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
- Associated Press
by CNB