Nation briefs

"The evidence of this treatment's effectiveness was so dramatic, the research was stopped early," said Dr. Paul Meis of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

Progesterone is naturally produced by the ovaries, and it softens the uterus lining into a spongy bed that holds a fertilized egg. Doctors have prescribed it for years to help infertile and menopausal women, but there had been limited research into its effect on premature births.

The study found weekly injections of the hormone reduced the chance of premature births by 34 percent in 306 high-risk women. An additional 153 women were injected with a placebo. All the women previously gave birth prematurely, the single biggest indication of risk.

The latest study is being carried out by 19 hospitals across the country under supervision by the National Institutes of Health. Meis presented the results at the annual meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

In 2001, about 476,000 babies were born prematurely in the United States, a 27 percent increase since 1981, according to the March of Dimes. One in eight babies was born before the 37th week of pregnancy, which is considered full term.

Babies born prematurely are at increased risk for neurological, hearing and behavioral problems. The average hospital charge in 2000 for a premature baby was $58,000, compared with $4,300 for a typical newborn, according to the March of Dimes.

Some of the increase in premature births can be attributed to more older women giving birth and the explosion of obesity in the country, Green said. But fully half of premature births have no known cause.

Calaveras frogs can jump through loophole

SACRAMENTO -- Calaveras County's celebrated jumping frogs can leap right through a loophole in state law after competing in the annual contest inspired by Mark Twain, state officials have concluded.

About 2,000 bullfrogs are captured each May for the Calaveras County Fair and Frog Jumping Jubilee in the old Sierra gold mining town of Angels Camp. For years, organizers urged participants to then put the frogs back carefully where they got them.

The California Department of Fish and Game warned last summer, however, that it's illegal to return the frogs to the wild, for fear they could spread disease or alter ecosystems if they are freed in new locations.

State officials went looking for an alternative to disrupting the popular contest or subjecting participants to the possible penalty of a $5,000 fine and a year in jail.

Now they won't have to, after finding an obscure provision inserted into the state's Fish and Game Code in 1957 that exempts frogs to be used in frog-jumping contests from general wildlife rules.

As a result, "it is the department's official position that frogs used in the jumping-frog contest are not subject to the prohibitions on release," Ed Pert, the department's fisheries programs chief, wrote to King Wednesday.<