CHECKUP : NEWS, TIPS AND TRENDS ARSENIC AN OLD CASE FOR HUBBY.

Wives who slowly poison their husbands by adding arsenic to their food do not only exist in Old World literature, according to a new case study.

A 35-year-old man in Valencia, Spain, was misdiagnosed with Guillain-Barr syndrome, a nervous system disorder, for more than a year while his wife was clandestinely poisoning his dinners, doctors at a hospital in Valencia reported in the British medical journal the Lancet.

The man was treated initially for Guillain-Barr syndrome, but was admitted to the hospital five months later with fever, bronchitis and an abnormal chest X-ray.

Arsenic poisoning was suspected because his symptoms got worse at home and indicated possible poisoning, Navarro wrote.

Upon questioning, the man's wife confessed that she had been adding ant-killer containing arsenic to his meals because she wanted a divorce and custody of their son, the Spanish doctors said.

Ten months after the correct diagnosis, the man was still in a rehabilitation program, they reported.

Lead exposure threat later: Reducing lead exposure during childhood increases an individual's earning potential 50 percent more than previously thought, according to Johns Hopkins researchers.

Scientists have known that children exposed to high levels of lead earn less than children who were not exposed to lead because their ability to think has been impaired, according to David Salkever, Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Earlier data had shown that reducing blood lead levels by 1 microgram per deciliter increased the earning potential of children born in a single year by $5 billion.

Using more recent data that took into account the growing wage gap between jobs with high and low cognitive requirements, Salkever found that reducing blood lead levels by 1 microgram per deciliter led to a $7.5 billion increase in wages.

``These findings are important because our society needs a productive work force,'' he said.

Girls will benefit twice as much as boys if their blood lead levels are reduced, the Maryland researcher reported in the journal Environmental Research.

For the record: The American Cancer Society currently recommends that a woman get her first mammogram at age 40 followed by one every one to two years thereafter.

However, the group is considering changing its recommendation to yearly mammograms beginning at age 50, according to Robert Smith, senior director in the department of cancer detection branch at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md.

The age that the ACS is considering to begin yearly mamograms was incorrectly reported in the July 8 Checkup column.