CHECKUP\NEWS, TIPS & TRENDS\Injection of cells could heal liver.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

Researchers say they've developed a method to help people suffering from liver disease without requiring a transplant. The method, which involves injecting billions of healthy liver cells into the diseased liver, theoretically would allow two or more people to benefit from a single donor organ, the researchers told the annual scientific meeting of the Society of Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology. The research is still very preliminary.

An old remedy: One of the gifts brought by the Three Wise Men might be a gift for those of you suffering from pain. Chemists at the University of Florence in Italy report in Science News magazine that they've found that myrrh - secretions of the thorny flowering shrub Commiphora - has analgesic properties.

Shocking hair discovery :It's not quite electroshock therapy for the hairline, but a new device, backers claim, restores hair growth by using mild electrical pulses. The machine will hit the market in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and Mexico by summer.

They call it electrotrichogenesis.

The patient lies on a chaise lounge and puts his or her head into a device that looks like a big salon hair dryer. The top of the head is then bathed by a mild, pulsing electrostatic field. The patient feels nothing, and nothing touches the scalp.

In a 1990 study by dermatologists at the University of British Columbia Medical School, patients achieved a 66 percent increase in hair count per square inch after 36 weeks of the treatment, and even more up to week 70. Researchers speculated that the pulses stimulated cell division around the hair follicles.

The downside: Twelve-minute treatments, at $50 each, are needed weekly for the first two years, and monthly after that. And company officials don't claim the moon even then.

"Some men and women we refer to as poster boys and girls get significant cosmetic results; others simply maintain what they've got," said Jeff Murdock, spokesman for Current Technology Corp. of Vancouver.

Residual effects:: Not using it doesn't necessarily mean you lose it. How much of the benefits of endurance training you lose if you quit exercising depends on your physical condition prior to stopping, the Penn State Sports Medicine Newsletter reports. Highly conditioned athletes can retain some of the benefits for several months.

Leg therapy: A new form of an old drug may allow patients with dangerous blood clots in their leg veins to treat themselves at home, rather than receive therapy in the hospital under a doctor's supervision, according to two new reports.

In the two studies looking at a combined 900 patients with a condition called deep-vein thrombosis, self-injections at home with the newer form of the drug heparin - a blood thinner - were just as safe and effective as intravenous administration with the older form of the drug in the hospital, Dutch and Canadian researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The condition affects roughly 250,000 Americans each year, commonly requiring five to 10 days of hospitalization and heparin therapy. Heparin works by thinning the blood, preventing leg clots from growing and traveling to the lungs, where they can prevent oxygen-rich blood from getting to the heart.