CHECKUP : NEWS, TIPS AND TRENDS LIFE-THREATENING DISEASE SPREAD BY COUNTY JAIL INMATES.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

An outbreak of dangerous meningococcal disease in California three years ago was spread by newly released prisoners who caught the bacteria in overcrowded jails, federal investigators conclude.

The germ, Neisseria meningitidis, spreads through mucus and usually causes no symptoms at all. But some people become desperately ill with life-threatening meningitis or blood poisoning.

From January through March 1993, 54 people came down with meningococcal disease in Los Angeles County. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied 42 of them - including three who died - to see how their habits differed from those of people who escaped the illness.

They found a strong link between getting sick and contact with men who had recently left the county jail system. Exposure to former prisoners increased the risk 19 times.

The results of the CDC investigation, led by Dr. Jordan W. Tappero, were published in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The researchers found that 19 percent of men getting out of jail were symptom-free carriers of the bacteria, compared with 1 percent of the general public.

At the time of the outbreak, the county jails averaged 22,246 inmates, 40 percent above capacity. The CDC said the overcrowding probably played a role in making the bacteria so common among prisoners.

An `approvable' drug: The so-called abortion drug RU-486, or mifepristone, has passed another hurdle but has not yet been approved for use in the United States.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an ``approvable letter'' for mifepristone, which is used in combination with another drug, misoprostol, for early abortion.

The letter indicates that the drug combination is safe and effective when used under close medical supervision, but that the FDA has concerns over other parts of the application for approval, such as the drug's labeling and the manufacturing process.

Although foreign patent rights are owned by the pharmaceutical firm Roussel-Uclaf, the company has donated its U.S. patent rights to the Population Council, a nonprofit family-planning research organization in New York.

The U.S. manufacturer of the drug will remain secret to protect it from anti-abortion protests. If approved, the drug will be marketed by Advances in Health Technology in Washington, D.C., a group formed by the Population Council.

Mifepristone cannot completely eliminate the need for surgical abortions, in part because it must be used so early in pregnancy. It can be taken up to seven weeks after a woman's last menstrual period.

Filter out eye fatigue: Glass screens on computer monitors can dramatically reduce vision problems that result from computer glare, a new study suggests.

In a series of surveys, New York researchers asked nearly 200 full-time computer workers in a corporate setting to evaluate vision problems and work performance before and after a coated glass filter was placed on their computer monitors.

While 75 percent of workers reported vision problems before using the filters, less than one-third reported such problems shortly after using the filters, the researchers reported. Workers said they felt less eye fatigue, itchiness and dryness, and had fewer problems focusing with the use of the filters. And they reported decreased lethargy and headaches.

While plastic computer glare filters - made of mesh or a plastic sheet that is either tinted or coated with special film - have been available for several years, workers still have complained of persistant visual problems with their use, the researchers said.

The newer glass filters, which cost about $100, have at least four layers of reflective coating on each side of the glass and are designed to meet American Optometric Association standards, they said.

Suspect alfalfa sprouts:A series of recent food-poisoning outbreaks have been traced to two unlikely sources - alfalfa sprouts and lettuce.

Three outbreaks of salmonella illness in 1995 and early 1996 have been linked to contaminated alfalfa sprouts.

And contaminated lettuce has been implicated in two outbreaks of E. coli sickness reported last year in Maine and Montana.

The outbreaks were unusual because salmonella and E. coli tend to occur in meat and animal products, such as milk and cheese, investigators said last week at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in New Orleans.

Forty cases of salmonella food poisoning in Oregon and British Columbia may have involved bacteria-tainted alfalfa sprouts. All the cases occurred late last year and early this year, said Dr. Chris Van Beneden of the Oregon Health Division.

Oregon health officials interviewed 43 of the food-poisoning victims and found that 17 recalled eating alfalfa sprouts within the five days before the interview. By comparison, the officials also interviewed 75 people who had no recent history of diarrheal disease. Only three recalled eating alfalfa sprouts within the previous five days. No other foods were linked to food poisoning.

A survey of restaurants visited by the food-poisoning group suggested that more than two-thirds of the cases might be related to contaminated alfalfa sprouts.

At the same time as the Oregon outbreak, health officials in British Columbia also noted an increase in salmonella food poisoning.

Medical detective work led the Oregon and Canadian investigators to a single alfalfa sprout grower in Portland as the distributor of the suspect sprouts. The grower bought seeds from a Kentucky distributor, which in turn had purchased the seeds from a company in the Netherlands.

Culture studies of suspect sprout samples confirmed the presence of salmonella.

During their investigation, Van Beneden and her colleagues became interested in another outbreak of salmonella-related sickness that occurred during the fall of 1995. The outbreak involved six states: Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Oklahoma.

Backtracking again, the investigators linked the six-state outbreak to the same Dutch seed distributor.

Dr. Barbara Mahon, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said that the CDC is working with alfalfa-sprout growers and seed distributors to develop more effective ways to prevent contamination with salmonella or other disease-causing microbes. Possible solutions include washing seeds in hot water, rinsing them with disinfectants and treating them with radiation, she said.