The team reviewed studies involving paracetamol and ovarian cancer between 1966 to 2004 in the UK, US and Denmark. The scientists concluded more research needed to be done to prove the health benefits of paracetamol.

But Dr Kat Arney, science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said all new findings into fighting the disease were welcome: 'This is a large and potentially important analysis that uses results from many different studies. Ovarian cancer kills around 4,600 women in the UK every year, and anything that can reduce this toll is welcome.

'But taking large doses of paracetamol over a long period of time can also have side effects. The next step is to do laboratory research to understand more about how paracetamol achieves this protective effect and to test the benefits of the drug in a large-scale clinical trial.'

Poor '10 times more likely to die younger'

Poorer 50-somethings are more than 10 times more likely to die than their richer peers, a study revealed today.

The research found older people with less money were also more likely to be prone to ill health, "despite a fairly even distribution in the quality of healthcare between different wealth groups".

"Striking" socio-economic differences were also found in numeracy and literacy, while approximately twice as many poorer people feel isolated often or some of the time compared with the richest. The data was culled from the latest results of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (Elsa).

Professor Sir Michael Marmot, of the University College London Department of Epidemiology and Public Health and principal investigator of the study, said: "By combining expertise from a number of disciplines, Elsa allows the interaction between health and economic status to be fully explored. "A key purpose of Elsa is to discover what people aged 50 years and above do, and are able to do, as they age.

"A second major purpose is to go beyond description of what people do to discover why they do it and to seek explanations for why some people have good trajectories in older age and others don't. "Without such understanding it is hard to see how policies could be designed to make things better." Of those aged 50-59, researchers found 2.5 per cent of the poorest fifth had died, compared with only 0.2 per cent of the richest fifth.

Of those aged 60-74, deaths accounted for 5.9 per cent of the poorest and 1.3 per cent of the richest.

Analysing 17 chronic conditions in those under 75, the relatively rich reported better health, with lower levels reporting a new diagnosis of disease and fewer complaints of symptoms, including severe pain.

The research shows greater wealth is also associated with lower prevalence of obesity in women and of central adiposity (measured by waist to hip ratio) in men and women.

Dr Elizabeth Breeze, of the UCL Department of Epidemiology and Public Health and one of the report's authors, said: "With regard to health, the richest had an advantage over the poorest, at least under the age of 75 years.

"This was noticeable for symptoms such as pain and poor balance, for recent diagnoses of disease, for some biological measures such as adverse body shape, and for impaired performance on mobility and strength tests."

The researchers also found quality of healthcare varied substantially by condition, but was generally better in those which are of greater public health importance, such as hypertension.

However, despite the differences in health, once a doctor or nurse had been seen, the quality of care did not appear to be influenced by wealth, the report found.

In numeracy and literacy it was found that, although only 4 per cent overall were impaired on both, almost eight times the proportion in the lowest quintile were impaired as in the highest.

The data, published tomorrow in the report Retirement, Health And Relationships In The Older Population In England, is the second set of results to be released from the most comprehensive study into the economic, social, psychological and health elements of the ageing process in Europe.

The study follows the life experiences of a group born before 1952 at two year intervals. Some 8,780 people were interviewed.

Addiction danger for child drinkers

Children who start drinking before 14 are more likely to become dependent on alcohol in later life, doctors warned yesterday.

Drinking in the early teens also puts men and women at greater risk of developing dependency more quickly and younger, researchers found.

Almost half of those who started consuming alcohol before 14 became reliant on it at some point.

This compared with nine per cent of those who began drinking after 21, the U.S. study found.

Those who started drinking as young teenagers were also more likely to become alcohol-dependent before they were 25.

And they were more than three times at risk of having two or more episodes of alcohol dependency in their lifetime, scientists at the Boston University School of Public Health and Youth Alcohol Prevention Centre found.

Dependency is defined as alcoholism or development of problems because of regular drinking. Reliancy periods can last months or years. Lead researcher Dr Ralph Hingson said: 'In general, each additional year earlier than 21 that a respondent began to drink, the greater the odds that he or she would develop alcohol dependence at some point in life.

'Our analysis suggests that interventions that delay drinking onset may not only reduce the acute consequences of drinking among youth but may help reduce alcohol dependence among adolescents and adults.'

The team studied more than 43,000 adults in a national survey. Its findings add to mounting research warning that alcohol causes more damage to the developing brains of teenagers than once thought.

The most alarming evidence, from a previous study, showed bingeing on alcohol can seriously damage parts of the brain that regulate learning and memory.

Dr Ting-Kai Li, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said: 'This work underscores the need for research to clarify how early drinking relates to the risk of lifetime alcohol problems. In particular, it is important to learn whether early alcohol use may affect the developing brain in ways that increase vulnerability to dependence.'

Aaron White, assistant professor of psychiatry at Duke University North Carolina, said: 'There is no doubt about it now. There are long-term cognitive consequences to excessive drinking of alcohol in adolescence.

'We definitely didn't know five or ten years ago that alcohol affected the teen brain differently. Now there's a sense of urgency.'

Figures released last week revealed that Britain's binge-drinking culture is claiming an increasing number of lives.

In the last five years, there has been a 37 per cent rise in drinkers dying from alcoholic liver disease - while hospital admissions for the condition have doubled in a decade.

The statistics emerged in a report that also warns of worrying levels of abuse among children. A recent survey found a quarter of secondary school pupils between 11 and 15 had had a drink the previous week.

As an alcohol and drug educator for the past 28 years, I am concerned by the growing numbers and percentages of my clients who are UNDER 18, displaying full scale alcohol problems. The other instructor in my catchment area has seen this increase as well, mostly in the past 5 years. Not only are there MORE problem drinkers, but the involvment is more intense and more often repeated (such as arrests for alcohol related offenses). As someone in the field, and as a parent to an 18 year old son, I would like to see more education and more specific intervention in grade school. These young people come from families that are "at risk" and have "at risk" older siblings. The courts I work with express the same concerns.