Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Sweden May Outlaw Cosmetic Surgery on Genitals

Sweden may make illegal an increasingly popular form of plastic surgery in which women want to change their genitals.

The country has banned genital mutilation, which is performed on 2 million women every year worldwide, often against their will, for cultural reasons. Cosmetic surgery is not mentioned in the law, but the country's National Board of Health believes the voluntary operations should be outlawed as well, according to an Agence France-Presse account.

Surgeons have seen a big rise in requests for cosmetic surgery on female genitals, according to AFP. Some seek labia changes for esthetic reasons, others want tighter vaginas for more sexual pleasure, and some Muslim women seek to reconstruct their hymens because they expect to be virgins when they are married.

"We are looking into the legal aspects of this kind of surgery and we will present a report to the government sometime this year," Per-Anders Sunesson, a lawyer who is in charge of the board's legal department, told the wire service.

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Testosterone Therapy Not Linked to Cancer, Heart Disease

An analysis of studies finds no hard evidence that men who are on testosterone therapy are likelier to get prostate cancer or heart disease.

Researchers have known since the 1940' that severe reductions of testosterone can cause shrinkage of metastatic prostate cancer. As a result, there has been a concern that raising testosterone levels might help any hidden prostate cancers grow.

But a review of 72 studies, appearing in the Jan. 29 New England Journal of Medicine, didn't see a connection.

The researchers found "no compelling evidence that testosterone replacement therapy increases the incidence of prostate cancer or cardiovascular disease," Dr. Abraham Morgentale, a urologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and a study co-author, says in a statement.

The notion that testosterone is linked to heart disease comes from the fact that men have more testosterone and also more heart trouble, but the researchers found no strong evidence there, either.

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Mom's Diet May Influence Baby's Life Span

What a female eats in pregnancy may affect how long her baby lives, says a new mouse study.

HealthDay reports that the research isn't necessarily true for humans. But researchers suggest that pregnant mice on a low-protein diet, which may not meet their nutritional needs, give birth to small, undernourished offspring with shortened life spans.

The study authors looked at three different groups of mouse mothers. One received a normal diet made up of 20 percent protein through pregnancy and breast-feeding. Their children lived for about two years.

The second group was fed normally during pregnancy, but then given a low-protein diet (about 8 percent) while breast-feeding. After weaning, the pups were then given a sugary, "cafeteria-style" diet consisting largely of sweetened condensed milk that mice apparently find very tasty. Those mouse pups lived an average of two months longer than the first group.

The third group got a low-protein diet while pregnant followed by a normal diet while lactating. Their offspring died six months earlier than the ones in the first group. When these pups were fed a cafeteria-style diet high in sugar, they died even sooner, according to the HealthDay account.

The research appears in the Jan. 29 issue of Nature.

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Study: Grapefruit Works as a Diet Aid

Grapefruit has been a staple among dieters for years, and a new study says that that's not without good reason.

Not only did a steady diet of grapefruit help obese people lose weight, it also protected them from getting diabetes, the BBC reports.

The study was conducted on 100 obese people, with an average weight of 218 pounds. Researchers at the Scripps Institute in San Diego had one group eat half a grapefruit before each meal; a second had a glass of grapefruit juice before each meal; the third, control group had no grapefruit.

After 12 weeks, those who ate grapefruit lost an average of 3.6 pounds, and some lost 10; the grapefruit juice group shed an average of 3.3 pounds; and the control group lost an average of about a half a pound, according to the BBC.

The grapefruit consumers also had lower insulin levels.

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Slaughtering Chickens Might Boost Bird Flu Risk to Humans

Fighting the bird flu epidemic that's sweeping Asia by slaughtering millions of chickens could inadvertently mutate the virus into one that's far more dangerous to people, United Nations health experts tell the Washington Post.

The contact that comes between the poultry and the people involved in their slaughter increases the risk that the bird flu will merge with the genes of ordinary human flu, the experts say.

The disease has spread to fowl in 10 Asian countries, including China, the world's most populous nation. And two more human deaths from the virus -- a pair of sisters -- were reported by Vietnam on Wednesday. Their deaths bring the confirmed human toll to 10, in addition to several more fatalities that are being investigated for links to bird flu, the Associated Press reports.

Some 15,000 people in Vietnam are involved in the slaughter of chickens, and U.N. officials suspect most wear little or no protective clothing, the Post reports. While this strain of the virus hasn't been transmitted by person-to-person contact, it has been passed to humans through contact with infected birds. Several health officials and agencies have warned that bird flu could become even more dangerous to people than SARS.

In its first warning to U.S. citizens on bird flu, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says doctors should keep a careful eye out for people with flu-like symptoms who recently traveled to Asia, reports the AP. The agency says it can test people with signs of influenza A for the H5N1 bird flu strain.

People who travel to countries reporting outbreaks should avoid areas near poultry farms, live animal markets, and surfaces contaminated with bird droppings, the CDC says. No cases of bird flu among animals or people have been reported so far in the United States.

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Parkinson's-Like Nerve Disorder Identified

Doctors may be frequently misdiagnosing a recently discovered genetic nerve disorder as Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's, HealthDayNews reports of a new study.

The illness is called fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome, or FXTAS (pronounced fax-tass). It typically affects men over age 50, causing tremors, balance problems and dementia, which all progressively worsen over time, much like Parkinson's and related conditions. People afflicted by the genetic flaw appear normal through childhood and much of their adult life.

FXTAS is closely related to fragile X syndrome, the leading cause of inherited mental retardation. But unlike those with fragile X, people with FXTAS are usually very smart and very productive, according to the University of California researchers who conducted the study.

The study is published in the Jan. 28 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Last Updated: Jan-28-2004