NO-HEADLINE

Doctors can safely return to giving newborn babies routine injections of vitamin K to prevent a rare but dangerous bleeding disease early in life, according to research published in the British Medical Journal yesterday. Routine use of injected vitamin K has been cut back in favour of less effective capsules after fears raised in 1990 that the injections produced higher rates of leukaemia and cancer in children.

Two new studies, however, show there is no such link. It appears that the disease can be completely eradicated "without the threat of leukaemia and childhood cancer as a side effect," the journal reports.