Infections with benefits?

BUENOS AIRES -- Early childhood viral infections might reduce the risk of developing heart disease later in life by as much as 90 percent, researchers from Sweden and Finland reported last week at the IV World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery.

According to the investigators, ''improved hygiene in early childhood might partially explain the greatest epidemic of the 20th century -- coronary heart disease."

It is the first time that the so-called ''hygiene hypothesis" has been linked to the development of heart disease. The hypothesis proposes that reduced microbial exposure because of improved sanitation and cleaner lifestyles has facilitated the rise in asthma, allergic disease, and multiple sclerosis in the Western world.

Researchers led by Dr. Erkki Pesonen, from the University Hospital in Lund, Sweden, compared 350 patients who had unstable angina, or a heart attack, with 350 ''control" subjects who did not have heart disease. Childhood contagious diseases were more frequent among those without heart disease, researchers noted.

REUTERS