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

Trace Amounts of Poison Found in Calif. Baby Food

Trace amounts of the raw ingredient in ricin poison have been detected in two tampered-with jars of baby food identified last month in Southern California.

The Orange County Register reported Thursday that police are seeking a 47-year-old transient man who may have knowledge of the tampering. Two separate sets of consumers last month found threatening notes inside jars of Gerber Banana Yogurt Dessert purchased at a supermarket in Irvine. Neither infant being fed the food was harmed, the newspaper reported.

The jars were sent to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which found traces of crushed castor beans, the raw ingredient used to produce ricin. The amounts were considered minute and nonlethal, the newspaper reported.

Unidentified officials cited by the newspaper said they considered the matter an isolated incident, although they urged the public to be cautious.

Ricin is one of the most lethal and easiest poisons to produce, experts told the newspaper. Even in small amounts, it can quickly kill people who breathe or ingest the poison.

The cellophane-wrapped notes were found inside the jars, purchased May 31 and June 16 at a Ralphs supermarket. The messages implied that they were planted by an Irvine police officer, whom officials refused to identify. The notes warned that infants who ate the food would die within a short period.

The newspaper identified the person sought for questioning as Charles Dewey Cage, formerly of Irvine. A man who claimed he was Cage called the Register Wednesday night, denying any involvement in the tamperings, the newspaper said.

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MRI Effective in Spotting Breast Tumors

For a small number of women with a genetic predisposition to developing breast cancer, regular screening with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be better than mammography at detecting tumors early, HealthDay reports.

Breast MRIs conducted annually were nearly 80 percent effective in picking up invasive cancers in these high-risk women, compared to the 33 percent effectiveness rating of annual mammographies, Dutch researchers reported in the July 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

However, experts agree that MRI's high rate of false positive results -- findings that indicate malignant tumors, but turn out to be benign -- make the technology much less desirable for women at normal breast cancer risk.

Breast cancer remains the second leading cause of cancer death among American women. While mammography is moderately effective in spotting tumors, a small percentage of women -- such as those carrying the BRCA1 or BRCA2 breast cancer genes -- may need screening technologies with even greater powers of detection, experts told HealthDay.

On the other hand, MRI's high false-positive rate would lead to many unnecessary biopsies if doctors used the diagnostic device on women at average risk, experts predicted.

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U.S. Sees School-Related Violence on the Wane

School violence has declined during the last dozen years, although fighting between students and youths bringing weapons to school remains a pervasive problem, according to a survey published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One-third of students surveyed last year reported being involved in a physical fight in the previous year, down from 42.5 percent in 1992. The decline was evident among both sexes and among whites, blacks, and Hispanics, according to a report in this week's issue of the CDC publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

At the same time, the percentage of students who said they had missed school in the prior 30 days because they were too frightened to attend rose to 5.4 percent in 2003 from 4.4 percent in 1993. The increase was significant among females, whites, and 11th graders, the survey found, while virtually no change was detected among other groups.

The rate of students who said they had brought weapons to school sank to 6.1 percent last year from 11.8 percent a decade earlier, although there was no statistical change in the percentage of students who had threatened to use a weapon, the report concluded.

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Brain Injury More Likely in Side-Impact Collisions

People involved in side-impact vehicle crashes are three times more likely to suffer a traumatic brain injury than those involved in a head-on crash or other types of collisions, says a University of Rochester study.

The study also found that brain injuries inflicted during side-impact collisions are usually more severe. The findings are published online in the August issue of the journal Annals of Emergency Medicine.

The researchers analyzed a sample of crashes reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for the year 2000. They found that traumatic brain injury was the cause of death in 51 to 74 percent of single-vehicle side collisions and 41 to 64 percent of multiple vehicle side-impact crashes.

The study also found that better head protection in vehicles could reduce all crash-related brain injuries by up to 61 percent, and cut fatal or critical brain injuries by up to 23.5 percent. Those percentages represent about 2,230 fewer deaths or critical injuries per year.

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Genetically Altered Foods Need to Be Assessed Individually

The safety of genetically altered foods should be assessed by federal agencies on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they pose a threat to human health, recommends a report from the U.S. National Academies' National Research Council and Institute of Medicine.

"All evidence to date indicates that any breeding technique that alters a plant or animal -- whether by genetic engineering or other methods -- has the potential to create unintended changes in the quality or amounts of food components that could harm health," committee chair Bettie Sue Masters, a chemistry professor at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center, said in a prepared statement.

"The possible impact of such compositional changes should be examined on a case-by-case basis to determine whether and how much further evaluation is needed," she said.

The committee noted that scientists currently have only limited ability to predict whether genetic engineering will cause adverse health effects in humans. More research in this area is needed, said the report.

It was commissioned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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