Minerva: October 2002

Entering the unresolved debate between alcohol consumption and bladder cancer, epidemiologists analysed data from an Italian case-control study and concluded that even in populations that drink a lot (in this case, wine) there is no significant association between the two. Its possible that confounding factors such as smoking, coffee drinking, and occupation (allowed for in this analysis) may have given rise to earlier inconsistent results (Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 2002;55:637-41).

Summer sunburn seems to be the norm among American teenagers despite high sunscreen use. With 72% of teenagers experiencing at least one sunburn during the summer, public health campaigns should probably be paying more attention to getting the message across about hat wearing, protective clothing, and avoiding peak exposure times in the war against skin cancer (Pediatrics2002;110:27-35).

Minervas concentration usually wanes during the afternoon, and she has to turn to coffee. A Swedish team has discovered that a protein called DARPP-32 is critical to the action of caffeine. Low doses of caffeine …