Every man over the age of 50 should be on a daily medication of cholesterol-lowering drugs to protect against heart disease and stroke, the government's heart tsar said yesterday. Roger Boyle said that blanket prescribing of statins should also apply to women from 60 or 65 to reduce the hundreds of thousands of deaths a year from cardiovascular diseases. He acknowledged that such a move would lead to accusations of a "nanny state" and that people would resist being medicalised from the age of 50 or 60. The British Heart Foundation urged caution against mass medication using statins until there was longer-term data on the side-effects. Research published this week in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology suggested a very slight increase in cancers associated with higher doses of the drugs.

Tomato sauces were produced from unique tomato varieties to study carotenoid absorption in humans. Tangerine tomatoes, high in cis-lycopene, especially prolycopene (7Z,9Z,7'Z,9'Z), and high--carotene tomatoes as an alternative dietary source of -carotene were grown and processed... Lycopene dose-adjusted triacylglycerol-rich lipoprotein AUC responses in the tangerine sauce group were relatively high when compared to those in the literature and the high--carotene group. The results support the hypothesis that lycopene cis-isomers are highly bioavailable and suggest that special tomato varieties can be utilized to increase both the intake and bioavailability of health-beneficial carotenoids.

USDA Agricultural Research Service scientist John R. Stommel developed the new high beta-carotene tomato lines--97L63, 97L66 and 97L97--for use in processing into paste, juices and sauces. High beta-carotene cherry and beefsteak type market tomatoes will also be released as specialty tomatoes for the fresh market.