TANNING SALON RAYS CAN DAMAGE AS MUCH AS SUN.

Byline: - Staff and Wire Services

If you're thinking about a few sessions in a tanning salon so you'll look great in that bikini - be careful.

Though one session on a tanning bed doesn't heat the skin as much as the sun, it can damage your skin just as much, and may even pave the way for skin cancer, a new study says.

``I think that most people who attend tanning salons think they provide a safe or, at best, a safer tan than outside tanning,'' says study lead author Dr. S. Elizabeth Whitmore, associate professor of dermatology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

But, ultraviolet rays from tanning bulbs produce the same damage as the sun to the outer skin layer and to your DNA, Whitmore says.

ASTHMA TREATMENT CLARIFIED: Two new studies clarify the roles of the two major drugs used to control chronic asthma, researchers say.

The drugs are inhaled corticosteroids, which reduce symptoms by preventing or reversing inflammation of the airways, and beta-2-agonists, which widen the airways by relaxing the muscles surrounding them.

The carefully controlled studies conclude that a beta-2-agonist can be given in addition to a corticosteroid to improve patient well-being and to reduce the dose of the corticosteroid, but that a beta-2-agonist alone is not enough to give relief.

``The first paper in the journal says that if asthma is well controlled by inhaled corticosteroids, you cannot substitute salmeterol (a beta-2-agonist) completely,'' says Dr. Robert F. Lemanske Jr., head of the division of pediatric allergy and immunology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and leader of one study. ``The second paper says that if asthma is not well controlled by an inhaled corticosteroid, you can add salmeterol to the regimen and get significantly better control. We found that you can reduce the dose of corticosteroid in those patients by up to 50 percent without a significant decrease in asthma control.''

The findings do not change the recommendations made in guidelines for asthma treatment issued in 1997, Lemanske says.

OVARIAN CANCER SUPPORT: Those who have been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and ovarian cancer survivors are invited to a free seminar at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesday The talk will include information about diagnosis, treatment, symptom and stress management, and the medical center's new Ovarian Cancer Networking Group. Cedars-Sinai is at 8700 Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles. To RSVP or for more information, call [phone].