CHECKUP\NEWS, TIPS & TRENDS\Depression spurs smoking for girls.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

Many girls take up cigarette smoking to ease signs of depression, a study of 2,500 females between the ages of 12 and 16 has found.

After controlling for alcohol use and parental smoking, regular smokers were almost twice as likely as occasional smokers to report high levels of depression and anxiety, Dr. George C. Patton of the University of Melbourne in Australia reported in the American Journal of Public Health.

The findings are consistent with the use of smoking as self-medication for depression and anxiety, he said. "Future health promotional campaigns might consider strategies that attend to perceived psychological benefits of smoking."

Status report: A study of nearly 13,000 Americans between the ages of 51 and 61 found that 20 percent of the men and 40 percent of the women were already retired and that 4 percent to 10 percent were partially retired.

The University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study also found that 40 percent had high blood pressure and a similar percentage had arthritis.

Thirteen percent had a heart condition, 10 percent had diabetes, and 11 percent had a psychiatric problem.

The mean net worth of all Americans in this age bracket was $238,544, but it ranged from $71,587 for blacks to $263,739 for whites, F. Thomas Juster, U. of M. economics professor, reported in the Journal of Human Resources.

Wafer drugs: Instead of taking pills or shots for disease, people may one day be implanted with plastic wafers drenched in drugs that slowly release therapeutic chemicals to their target sites.

That scenario was drawn at a session of the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting held recently in Baltimore. Wafers implanted at the site of tumors, for example, can deliver cancer-fighting drugs of high potency.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins are using this technology to treat brain tumors, said Dr. Henry Brem, Hopkins director of neurosurgical oncology. "This is practical now, and we're working to develop even more effective chemotherapeutic drugs. It may also be important for cancers in other organs."

A new weapon?: Compounds that prevent the growth of blood vessels may offer another weapon in the fight against cancer, if studies in mice bear out in humans.

An important step in the development of cancer is the process of angiogenesis, the out-of-control growth of new blood vessels thought to be involved in the formation of tumors. Drugs that inhibit this process, researchers believe, should slow the growth of tumors.

In a new study, mice that were genetically programmed to develop pancreatic cancer had almost 90 percent fewer tumors if they were given a combination of three drugs that inhibit angiogenesis.

Overall, the treated mice had 40 percent fewer new blood vessels in the area of their tumors than those mice who were not given the compounds, according to the study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The three compounds were AGM-1470, which is derived from fungus; minocycline, an antibiotic; and interferon alpha/beta, a protein produced by human cells in response to viral infection. They appear to work by blocking growth factors released by the cancer cells.