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

50,000 Medicare Recipients to Get Early Drug Coverage

Most of the 500,000 Medicare participants without prescription-drug coverage will have to wait until 2006 to have their costs covered by last year's prescription drug law. But about 10 percent of them will get a 16-month head start -- thanks to a lottery announced by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, according to the Associated Press.

The "lucky individuals" Thompson mentioned at a Thursday press conference will be randomly chosen for early coverage. The lottery, written into the law passed by Congress last year, is limited to 50,000 people at a maximum cost of $500 million. Medicare will accept lottery applications from July 6 to Sept. 30, and will randomly select 25,000 cancer patients and 25,000 people with other conditions, the AP reported.

The program will mirror the 2006 drug benefit. Among the cancer drugs covered will be Gleevec for stomach cancer, thalidomide for blood cancer, and tamoxifen for breast cancer. Other conditions covered will include multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, the AP said.

The news service quoted an American Cancer Society spokeswoman who said that, while the lottery program would have minimal impact on people with cancer, some coverage is better than none.

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Portland, Maine, is Latest City to Offer Canadian Drugs

The city of Portland, Me., is backing a program that will help 2,800 city employees to buy less expensive prescription drugs from Canada, the Portland Press Herald reported Friday.

It would make Portland the latest community to buck concerns by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other federal regulators who have insisted that imported drugs could be improperly labeled, counterfeit, and even unsafe.

The city estimates the program will save at least $250,000 a year, the newspaper reported. The program will not be run by the city itself, but will be overseen by a group of city officials and labor union representatives.

To increase participation, the city will waive the 20 percent contribution that employees normally pay under the municipal health plan, the Press Herald reported.

The drugs will be purchased by a U.S.-based drug broker, CanaRx, which has been chosen by several other city and state governments that have opted to let employees purchase prescription drugs from Canada. Due to Canadian government price controls, the medicines are 40 percent to 80 percent cheaper than equivalents sold in the Untied States.

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1st Stroke More Likely on Mondays, in Winter

A person's first stroke is more likely to occur on a Monday in younger people and in winter among older people, according to new research presented Thursday at the 5th World Stroke Congress in Vancouver, Canada.

An analysis of 12,529 first-stroke cases also found that instances of stroke were significantly higher in spring in men and in winter in women, according to a statement from the researchers at Japan's Tottori University.

The researchers offered little explanation for the weekly and seasonal variations, although they theorized that the Monday peak among younger people could be attributed to the post-weekend stress of returning to work.

Results of their research are published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

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Jury Awards $7.4 Million in Ephedra Suit

A jury awarded a 35-year-old Texas woman $7.4 million Wednesday, finding that the dietary supplement Metabolife caused a stroke that left her brain-damaged.

The Houston Chronicle reports that the jury found that Metabolife International Inc. acted maliciously by including ephedra, the now-banned diet drug, in its supplement. It awarded Rhea McAllister $2.4 million for damage caused by the drug and another $5 million in punitive damages.

According to the Chronicle, the stroke left McAllister numb on her right side, making it difficult for her to use her right hand and causing her to drag her right foot. She also suffered short-term memory loss and dizziness that is so unpredictable that she is afraid to drive.

The suit is among the first to be tried since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned ephedra in April. McAllister's attorneys accused Metabolife of trying to hide thousands of complaints about adverse reactions to its product, the newspaper reports.

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Genetic Marker to Rheumatoid Arthritis Found

Researchers have found a not-too-uncommon genetic variation that doubles a person's risk of getting rheumatoid arthritis.

The variation, called a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), is present in about 28 of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers and about 17 percent of the general population, according to a study in the August issue of the journal American Journal of Human Genetics.

The SNP the researchers linked to arthritis is in a gene that codes for an enzyme that controls the activation of immune cells. When SNP is present in both copies of a gene, the immune cells over-respond and cause inflammation.

"This is not an abnormal gene," said Dr. Peter Gregersen of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Research Institute, leader of the study. "This particular genetic variation may have contributed to the survival of our ancestors. The price we have to pay for that, however, is that some people are modestly predisposed to developing rheumatoid arthritis."

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Dirty Air Plagues Many National Parks

A new report finds that many of the country's national parks have dirty air, and that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina is the most polluted.

CNN reports that the Smokies contain unhealthy ozone levels that are higher than those found in major cities like New York. The report, complied by the National Parks Conservation Association, Appalachian Voices, and Our Children's Earth, has tracked air quality trends at the parks for the last decade.

Between 1999 and 2003, the park recorded 150 unhealthy air days, or about a month per year, according to the CNN account. During the peak summer season, visitors were advised to avoid prolonged exposure to the outdoor air.

Other parks making the dubious list include Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, Acadia National Park in Maine, and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks in California.

Most of the pollution comes from outside sources, like factories and auto exhaust. "America's national parks represent our nation's heritage, and a veil of haze and smog hangs over these special places," said Thomas Kiernan, president of the National Parks Conservation Association.

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