Women Health

The UCI Medical Center has been chosen by the National Institutes of Health to take part in an unprecedented $628-million, 18-year commitment to research chronic diseases that affect women, such as breast cancer, heart disease and osteoporosis. The medical center will be one of 24 centers nationwide to conduct the Women's Health Initiative, officials said Thursday. As part of the study, UCI Medical Center will receive about $9 million over an 11-year period.

In a surprising reversal of prevailing medical wisdom, researchers conducting a nationwide study of women's hormone replacement therapy have warned subjects taking estrogen that they are slightly more likely to have heart attacks, strokes or blood clots during the first two years of use. Researchers have long assumed that estrogen helps protect women from cardiovascular problems. But the new findings appear to cast doubt on that assumption.

Women who have frequent vaginal yeast infections can now obtain medication without a prescription. Gyne-Lotrimin can be purchased over the counter since its January approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Another medication, Monistat, also has been approved and should be available within the next week to 10 days. The federal agency occasionally honors requests from pharmaceutical companies to reclassify drugs if certain safety considerations are met.

It's one of those sodden, snow-crusted days when the sky looks like dishwater, the office temperature won't budge above chilly and Dr. Vladimir N. Serov dreams of Santa Barbara. Not the town. The soap opera. The television melodrama has set Russians swooning for years, and it has inspired Serov to dream as well. He marvels aloud at the medical care on the show. He wishes he could lift it from the TV and graft it onto Russian society. Starting with his own obstetrics practice.

"The Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them." --Exodus, Chapter 1, Verse 19 * In biblical times, physically active Hebrew slave women gave birth more easily than did their Egyptian mistresses. In the third century BC, Aristotle attributed difficulties in childbirth to a sedentary lifestyle. Today, scientific data support this ancient notion that exercise benefits pregnant women and their babies.

The sign marking the studio parking lot read, fairly subtly, "36-D." God knows who might have stopped by if it said "Breast Men." Probably more than just the cast and crew for the HBO movie of that title, which recently finished filming in Sylmar. "Breast Men," medical jargon for the plastic surgeons who specialize in bosom amplification, traces the rise and fall of the silicone gel breast implant over 30 years.

The idea of beautiful breasts has changed over time. In the 1950s, the ideal was pointy; for the next two decades it was small and free; in the 1980s and '90s, big and round; and now from actress Pamela Anderson Lee, an unlikely role model, comes the message that natural is beautiful. Two weeks ago, the 31-year-old Lee announced that she had her implants removed to return to a more natural state.

Prof. Randy Thornhill is studying the languorous, lingerie-clad form of Stephanie Seymour in a Victoria's Secret catalogue with clinical detachment. The model's pouty lips and prominent cheekbones signal that she has high levels of estrogen, he observes. Ditto for the small lower jaw and overall flatness of her face. Leafing through the rest of the catalogue, Thornhill finds confirmation of his theories of human beauty on every page.

The unpalatable truth must be faced that all post-menopausal women are castrates . . . . Our streets abound with them--walking stiffly in twos and threes, seeing little and observing less. It is not unusual to see an erect man of 75 vigorously striding along on a golf course, but never a woman of this age. . . . Now, for the first time in history, women may share the promise of tomorrow as biological equals of men. Thanks to hormone therapy, they can be feminine forever. --Dr.

Women's Health Initiative: The largest research study ever funded by the National Institutes of Health may be headed for trouble. The study, involving 160,000 women and 14 years of work, was designed to make up for years of neglect on women's health. But in November, a committee of the Institute of Medicine expressed great skepticism in the merits of the study, setting up a battle this year that might curb the ambitious effort.