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Worldwide Rate of AIDS Cases Overestimated
Surgery on Conjoined Twins Deemed Successful
White Bread Tied to Fleshy Bellies
AIDS Activists Target Larry Flynt
Baby-Food Tampering Scare in California

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

The number of cases of AIDS cases worldwide may have been severely underestimated because of errors in statistical models and a failure to detect the decline in the pandemic, the Boston Globe reported Sunday.

Experts now say that the number of AIDS cases, especially in the developing world, may be less than half of what had been reported, according to experts.

In Rwanda, for instance, the prevalence of the disease is expected to be put at 5 percent of the population; four years ago, the estimate was 11 percent. In Haiti, the estimate is expected to be placed at 3 percent, whereas the most recent report from the United Nations had it at 6 percent.

Even with lower estimates, the Globe reports, health specialists say that AIDS remains dangerous pandemic in the developing world, especially in Africa, where it has killed millions in the prime of their lives.

Applause broke out in a Washington, D.C., hospital Saturday after doctors successfully separated a set of 4-month-old twin girls who were born conjoined at the chest and abdomen.

The Washington Post reports that the surgery to separate Jade and Erin Buckles of suburban Washington took less than three hours, and that the girls' mother proclaimed the operation to be the "best Father's Day gift" she could imagine.

"You've now got two babies that are separate, and they're both doing well," the paper quotes the lead surgeon, Dr. Kurt Newman, as saying.

The girls were in critical condition in separate isolettes in an intensive care unit, according to the Post. Their recovery was expected to last anywhere between a few weeks and a few months, depending on how serious the complications are.

People who eat a lot of refined grains like white bread seem to have paunchier bellies, researchers say.

The Associated Press reports that those who consumed white bread and its ilk saw their waistlines expand about a half-inch per year. Researchers say that some of the people they tracked over a three-year period inched up into a larger size of pants.

''Waist circumference was very much associated with this high-refined grains pattern,'' Katherine Tucker, an associate professor of nutritional epidemiology at Tufts University, told the AP.

Her team followed the eating habits of 459 middle-aged people in Baltimore. Some liked the refined grains, while others preferred whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. When grains are refined, the fibrous bran is removed, the wire service explains.

The team is trying to figure out why refined grains appear to send calories straight to the midsection. One theory is that they appear to be more sensitive to insulin, which tends to store the calories as fat, according to the AP account.

About 20 AIDS activists picketed outside Larry Flynt's office in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Friday, urging the pornography mogul to use condoms in his films.

"Today we are here to urge Larry Flynt to do the right thing," the Los Angeles Times quoted Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Health Care Foundation, as saying.

The protesters took aim at Flynt because he wrote in a recent Times commentary that porn films containing condom use "don't sell."

In April, five porn actors tested positive for the AIDS virus, prompting the industry to go into a near-complete shutdown as actors were quarantined until they were tested for HIV.

Some of the major adult entertainment producers require condom use in their films.

Parents in a Southern California community are on edge over threats that baby food may be poisoned, but authorities urged them to be vigilant without panicking.

The Orange County Register reports that police are investigating two reports that cellophane-wrapped messages were found in Gerber banana-yogurt deserts in a store in Irvine. The jars were pulled from a Ralphs grocery store, the paper reports, though the company declined to confirm exactly which store.

The two notes were apparently written in the same hand. In an unusual twist, both notes referred to an unidentified Irvine police officer, prompting the district attorney's office to join in the investigation.

"We don't know how widespread this is," Lt. Jeff Love of the Irvine police told the Register. "There are a lot of morally sick people in the world that might try to frighten the parents of a child.-