| (Associated Press) -- Scientists are reporting a major advance in diagnosing tuberculosis: A new test can reveal in less than two hours, with very high accuracy, whether someone has the disease and if it's resistant to the main drug for treating it.
(USA TODAY) -- A company-sponsored study found that the weight-loss drug Meridia raised heart attack and stroke risk in patients with pre-existing heart disease, according to a report out today.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Editors of a top medical journal call Meridia "another flawed diet pill" and question whether it should stay on the market as a study shows it raises the risk of heart attack and stroke in people with heart problems.
(USA TODAY) -- Poring over crossword puzzles, reading and listening to tunes may slow or delay brain decline at first, but being mentally active might speed up dementia once it hits, new research suggests.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Allergan Inc., the maker of wrinkle-smoothing Botox, has agreed to pay $600 million to settle a years long federal investigation into its marketing of the top-selling, botulin-based drug.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (USA TODAY) -- Football fans understand when a player is forced to the sidelines with torn knee ligaments. They grasp the severity of groin injuries, sports hernias and ruptured Achilles tendons. Clinical depression?
(USA TODAY) -- Actor Michael Douglas says he is upbeat in spite of a diagnosis of advanced throat cancer, which he discussed Tuesday on The Late Show With David Letterman.
LONDON (AP) -- Millions of free malaria drugs are sent to Africa every year by international donors. New research is now providing evidence for what health workers have long suspected: some of the donated medication is being stolen and resold on commercial markets.
(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) -- Let's start with a waist-whittling word problem.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Surgery to remove healthy ovaries gives a triple benefit to high-risk women: It lowers their threat of breast and ovarian cancer, and boosts their chances of living longer, new research suggests.
DENVER (The New York Times News Service) -- Health officials are recommending that almost everyone get a flu shot this year.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Greece is set to impose a tough smoking ban starting Wednesday that will outlaw lighting up in all public indoor areas and prohibit most tobacco advertising.
(The New York Times News Service) -- TAMPA -- Come December, medical professionals will have a new tool to determine whether a patient is abusing prescription drugs.
LONDON (Canadian Press) -- Around 10,000 cases of breast and bowel cancer could be avoided every year in Britain if people did a bit more brisk walking, the World Cancer Research Fund said Tuesday.
(USA TODAY) -- Stationary bikes in gyms, eateries, even a jail wired to produce power.
LONDON -- Author J.K. Rowling has given 10 million pounds ($15.4 million) to set up a clinic to treat and research multiple sclerosis, the disease that killed her mother.
(USA TODAY) -- The family of late Colorado Rockies President Keli McGregor issued a statement Monday, saying he died of a rare virus that infected the heart muscle.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Andrew White returned from a nine-month tour in Iraq beset with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder: insomnia, nightmares, constant restlessness. Doctors tried to ease his symptoms using three psychiatric drugs, including a potent anti-psychotic called Seroquel.
JAKARTA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Indonesian health officials were working Tuesday to prevent outbreaks of disease as thousands of villagers remained in evacuation centres after the eruption of a volcano on Sumatra island, officials said.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- By his own reckoning, a Navy electrician spent just eight hours in Vietnam, during a layover on his flight back to the U.S. in 1966. He bought some cigarettes and snapped a few photos.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's flu-shot season already, and for the first time health authorities are urging nearly everyone to get vaccinated. There is even a new high-dose version for people 65 or older.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More women will be giving birth by C-section for the foreseeable future, government scientists said Monday, releasing a study into the causes of a trend that troubles maternal health experts.
TAMPA (The New York Times News Service) -- Come December, medical professionals will have a new tool to determine whether a patient is abusing prescription drugs.
TORONTO (Canadian Press) -- Smoking pot can make some of the pain go away, without the patient getting high.
BERLIN (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- All that glitters is not gold - as everyone knows who gets a rash from cheap jewellery - and now German scientists have proven that there is such a thing as being allergic to costume jewellery.
HAMBURG (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Depression can heighten the risk of developing type 2 diabetes as the mental illness also increases the likelihood of obesity and failing to take enough exercise, a study carried out by the German Diabetes Association (DDG) has shown.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Andrew White returned from a nine-month tour in Iraq beset with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder: insomnia, nightmares, constant restlessness. Doctors tried to ease his symptoms using three psychiatric drugs, including a potent anti-pyschotic called Seroquel.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Emergency room visits for school-age athletes with concussions has skyrocketed in recent years, suggesting the intensity of kids' sports has increased along with awareness of head injuries.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More women will be giving birth by C-section for the foreseeable future, government scientists said Monday, releasing a study into the causes of a trend that troubles maternal health experts.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Eating more heart-healthy omega-3 fats provided no additional benefit in a study of heart attack survivors who were already getting good care, Dutch researchers report.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's flu-shot season already, and for the first time health authorities are urging nearly everyone to get vaccinated. There is even a new high-dose version for people 65 or older.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Food and Drug Administration officials say they have found positive samples of salmonella that link two Iowa farms to a massive egg recall.
LONDON (AP) -- Doctors who are atheist or agnostic are twice as likely to make decisions that could end the lives of their terminally ill patients, compared to doctors who are very religious, according to a new study in Britain.
VIENNA (AP) -- Austria's health ministry is reporting two cases of a new gene that allows bacteria to become a superbug.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Doctors were shocked when they looked into a woman's uterus searching for an orange-size tumor but found something that resembled a giant rock instead.
From Iowa farms to a Texas Army base, this week's news touches on many topics. The federal government continues investigations into infected chicken eggs that have sickened more than 1,300 Americans. The nation's largest Army base is overtaxed by soldiers who need mental health counseling and other treatment. For the first time, researchers have coaxed a human cornea to heal itself. A mouse study shows that a common drug for rheumatoid arthritis may show promise in preventing Alzheimers disease.
The U.S. birth rate has dropped for the second year in a row, and experts think the wrenching recession led many people to put off having children. The 2009 birth rate also set a record: lowest in a century.
LONDON (AP) -- The European Medicines Agency is investigating whether there is a link between narcolepsy and a swine flu vaccine.
(Canadian Press) -- TORONTO - Ontario's "fractured" system for dealing with those struggling with mental health and addiction problems needs a "radical transformation" if people are to receive the help they need, according to a new report backed by members of all three major political parties.
(The New York Times News Service) -- Dear Healthy Professor: Why is the obesity epidemic on the rise?
MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities have begun enforcing tougher rules designed to ensure that people have a doctor's prescription to buy antibiotics.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- Doctors and activists say AIDS patients aren't getting treated because of a nationwide civil service strike in South Africa, the country with the most people infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) -- A Johnson & Johnson business that makes joint replacements has been warned by the Food and Drug Administration that it's breaking the law with its marketing of two products.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- A recent federal court ruling could force nursing homes to balance the rights of patients to choose their own care against the civil rights of nursing home employees.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A startling number of Gulf coast area children displaced by Hurricane Katrina still have serious emotional or behavioral problems five years later, a new study found.
(USA TODAY) -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has added 40 illnesses to the estimated 1,300 that have occurred already in the salmonella enteritidis outbreak that forced the recall of half a billion eggs.
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - Roast beef and ham that was distributed to Walmart delicatessens nationwide and sold in sandwiches has been recalled because it might be tainted with potentially harmful bacteria, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Need an X-ray or stitches? Online, via text message or flashing on a billboard, some emergency rooms are advertising how long the dreaded wait for care will be, with estimates updated every few minutes.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S. government study has uncovered a family of mouse viruses in some people with chronic fatigue syndrome, raising still more questions about whether an infection may play a role in the complicated illness.
(Associated Press) -- Two large Iowa farms have recalled 550 million eggs because of possible contamination with salmonella. Investigators from the Food and Drug Administration are trying to find the cause of the outbreak, but so far haven't pinpointed the source.
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - No sutures and other basics; a dire shortage of staff; catastrophic hygiene; then this - a hospital blaze that killed five premature babies. Romania's hospital system is on the ropes.
Berlin (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) - Overweight women are advised to lose some weight if they want to have a safe pregnancy, according to a German health organization.
(The New York Times News Service) -- It has been known for some years that people who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease.
Cologne (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Endurance is important during exercise but the stubborn belief that the body begins to burn fat only after 30 minutes is a myth, according to Ingo Froboese, a professor at the Health Centre of the German Sport University in Cologne.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (A) -- Malaysia has closed parks and warned the public about swimming and dumping trash in rivers after up to 10 people died from a disease spread by rats.
FORT HOOD, Texas (USA TODAY) -- Nine months after an Army psychiatrist was charged with fatally shooting 13 soldiers and wounding 30, the nation's largest Army post can measure the toll of war in the more than 10,000 mental health evaluations, referrals or therapy sessions held every month.
Islamabad (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- The United Nations said on Monday that millions of people were facing hunger and disease after the worst floods in Pakistan's history.
LONDON - The fear of falling may be enough to make elderly people more likely to fall, regardless of their actual risk, a new study says.
(Associated Press) -- Palliative care, which helps the gravely ill make the most of the time they have left, provided a surprising bonus for terminal lung cancer patients: More time left to enjoy.
(Associated Press) -- Tai chi eased painful joints and other symptoms of fibromyalgia in a small but well-done study of this ancient Chinese form of exercise.
NEW YORK, N.Y. (Canadian Press) -- A new study shows that there's less smoking depicted in movies in recent years.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Hundreds of people have been sickened in a salmonella outbreak linked to eggs in four states and possibly more, health officials said Wednesday as a company dramatically expanded a recall to 380 million eggs.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A majority of federal health advisers say a best-selling antidepressant from Eli Lilly & Co. appears effective in treating back pain, but not arthritis.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Shire PLC said Tuesday it will pull a blood-pressure drug off the market following warnings from federal regulators who said the drug has not been proven effective.
BEIJING (AP) -- Efforts to curb tobacco use in the world's most populous nation have had no real impact and 301 million Chinese are still smoking, China's Center for Disease Control said in a report.
VIENTIANE, Laos (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- A cholera outbreak killed four people in southern Laos before health workers could halt the disease, state media reports said Wednesday.
CHICAGO (AP) -- A stunning one in five teens has lost a little bit of hearing, and the problem has increased substantially in recent years, a new national study has found.
(Associated Press) -- Cancer is the world's top "economic killer" as well as its likely leading cause of death, the American Cancer Society contends in a new report it will present at a global cancer conference in China this week.
ISLAMABAD (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Three people have died at relief camps for Pakistan's flood victims as diseases started to spread, media and health officials said on Tuesday.
SAN DIEGO (USA TODAY) -- Men who say they had a good relationship with their father while growing up react less to day-to-day stress as adults than those whose relationship with their dad was poor, new research suggests.
DARMSTADT, Germany (Canadian Press) -- A German singer facing accusations that she infected a man with the virus that causes AIDS acknowledged in court Monday that she had unprotected sex despite knowing she was HIV-positive.
CHICAGO (AP) -- The Federal Trade Commission says an Arizona company defrauded consumers who signed up for free trials of acai (ah-sah-EE') berry weight-loss pills and colon cleansing supplements.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- There's good news for parents who worry that their teenagers' sex lives are affecting their school performance: A provocative new study has found that teens in committed relationships do no better or worse in school than those who don't have sex.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is being put under the microscope like no other kind on the market, with fish, shrimp and other catches ground up to hunt for minute traces of oil -- far more reassuring than that sniff test that made all the headlines.
ATLANTA (AP) -- A rare U.S. outbreak of typhoid fever has been linked to a frozen tropical fruit product used to make smoothies, health officials reported Thursday.
TORONTO (Canadian Press) -- Health providers should routinely ask women of child-bearing age about their alcohol consumption as a first step in trying to prevent fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in children, says the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Global sales of vaccines grew by a healthy 16 percent last year, when sales shot up to $22.1 billion, healthcare market research publisher Kalorama Information reported Friday.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Cooking chicken on the grill this summer? Be careful. Poultry is still the leading culprit in food poisoning outbreaks, health officials said Thursday.
(The New York Times News Service) -- This time last year, doctors and public health leaders were anticipating one of the worst flu seasons in decades, as hundreds of thousands of children returned to school with no protection from a new influenza virus that was rapidly spreading around the world.
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan prides itself on the world's longest life expectancy but is struggling with a disturbing footnote to that statistic -- revelations that hundreds of people listed as its oldest citizens are either long dead or haven't been heard from for decades.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal health regulators are warning doctors and patients that an anti-seizure drug from GlaxoSmithKline PLC can cause rare inflammation of the brain and spinal cord.
BOSTON (AP) -- Doctors say they have found a pea sprouting in the lung of a 75-year-old Massachusetts man.
LONDON (AP) -- The rate at which women died from breast cancer dropped faster in Britain than in any other major European country during the last two decades, according to new research.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (Associated Press) -- In a story Aug. 10 about an apparent increase in attacks on nurses and other emergency room workers, The Associated Press erroneously identified the University of Cincinnati professor who is helping the federal government study the problem. Her correct name is Donna Gates, not Donna Graves.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Aggressive, drug-resistant staph infections caught in hospitals or from medical treatment are becoming scarcer, another sign of progress in a prevention effort that has become a national public health priority.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Argentina's public health system is failing many of the women who depend on it for access to birth control and abortion, a human rights group said Tuesday.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Emergency room nurse Erin Riley suffered bruises, scratches and a chipped tooth last year from trying to pull the clamped jaws of a psychotic patient off the hand of a doctor at a suburban Cleveland hospital.
GENEVA (AP) -- The World Health Organization declared the swine flu pandemic officially over Tuesday, months after many national authorities started canceling vaccine orders and shutting down telephone hot lines as the disease ebbed from the headlines.
CHICAGO (AP) -- If your pants are feeling a bit tight around the waistline, take note: Belly bulge can be deadly for older adults, even those who aren't overweight or obese by other measures.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Doctors can't tell if Leif Utoft Bollesen's mild memory loss will remain an annoyance or worsen, but experimental checks of the Minnesota man's aging brain may offer clues.
BERLIN (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- When you are depressed, everything around you really does look grey, according to a team of German scientists who say that depression causes changes in vision.
BANGKOK (Canadian Press) -- Health authorities in Thailand are urging young women not to wear fashionable black leggings to avoid attracting unwanted attention from dengue-carrying mosquitoes.
MUNICH (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Big brains are less susceptible to Alzheimer's, according to German researchers, who say that proper nutrition for infants could be a key to alleviating this dreaded dementia condition.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Medical filters that stop blood clots from reaching the lungs can move or break and cause life-threatening problems for patients, the government and a medical journal report said Monday.
BALTIMORE (AP) -- Waking from a fog of anesthesia, Sandy Wilson found she was a patient in one of the hospitals where she worked as a nurse. She remembered having a baby, and being told she had gotten an infection. But nothing could prepare her for what lurked beneath the sheets.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Fido's food may be making kids sick, a government report warns, detailing the first known salmonella outbreak in humans, mostly young children, linked to pet food.
DENVER (The New York Times News Service) -- Dr. Reid Goodman was out to lunch when he flicked on his iPhone and realized something was seriously wrong -- his patient in labor at Denver's Rose Medical Center was in trouble.
LONDON (AP) -- Women who suffer a miscarriage may have the best chance of having a baby if they get pregnant again within six months, new research says.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pizzas and hamburgers in the school lunch line would be healthier under child nutrition legislation passed by the Senate Thursday, a key part of first lady Michelle Obama's campaign to end childhood obesity.
ATLANTA (AP) -- A government panel is recommending doctors steer clear of giving one brand of flu vaccine to young children this year because of convulsions and fever in kids who got the shot in Australia and New Zealand.
LONDON (AP) -- Women who gain too much weight during pregnancy have big babies, putting their children at risk of becoming heavy later on, a new study says.
BEIJING (AP) -- Some 10,000 residents in a southern China town have been told not to drink tap water after tests showed it was contaminated by a heavy metal, a local official said Wednesday.
KATHMANDU (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- The death toll from an outbreak of cholera reached 23 in the mid-western districts of Nepal, local media reported Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Michelle Obama dishes on the first family's health and eating habits in a new magazine interview, admitting she can't stand beets and that she does an occasional dietary "cleanse" to clear her palate and change her mindset.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Makers of X-ray machines, drug pumps and other medical devices would have to submit more safety information to win federal approval under a proposal designed to tighten regulation of thousands of products reviewed each year.
(USA TODAY) -- Cardiac index -- the measure of how well the heart is pumping blood to the brain and the rest of the body -- may be an indicator of a person's risk for developing dementia in the future.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The final straw came when Guy Vance's chest, neck and face ballooned, little air bubbles in his skin crackling to the touch -- all because of a leak somewhere in his lung.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Are Americans becoming more honest about their weight?
SAN FRANCISCO (The New York Times News Service) -- Take note, kids. What you do to your body today really could hurt you a few decades from now.
TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese authorities admitted Tuesday they'd lost track of a 113-year-old woman listed as Tokyo's oldest, days after police searched the home of the city's official oldest man -- only to find his long-dead, mummified body.
NEW YORK (AP) -- A few months ago, Dr. Thomas Einhorn was treating a patient with a broken ankle that wouldn't heal, even with multiple surgeries. So he sought help from the man's own body.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan dispatched medical teams Monday to the deluged northwest amid fears that cholera could spread after the worst floods in the country's history that have already killed up to 1,200 people, an official said.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- A U.S.-based rights group urged the Philippines on Monday to reform a tough anti-abortion law that it says has spawned widespread underground procedures that kill about 1,000 women each year in the predominantly Roman Catholic country.
TORONTO (Canadian Press) -- Cancer patients from poor neighbourhoods have a greater chance of dying prematurely than their wealthier counterparts, says a new study, describing a problem that persists despite universal health care in Canada.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists are making progress in testing stem cells to treat a variety of diseases, but they're warning about clinics that push unproven treatments.
HANOI (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Vietnamese health experts have called for urgent action to promote breastfeeding, government officials said Friday.
ROME (AP) -- Doctors have successfully transplanted windpipes into two cancer patients in an innovative procedure that uses stem cells to allow a donated trachea to regenerate tissue and create an organ biologically close to the original, they said Friday.
(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) -- As Garry Phebus sees it, he's going to suffer a lot and then die within the next few years, so why not donate his organs --- heart, lungs, liver --- now, while he's alive.
TAMPA (The New York Times News Service) -- A Brandon-area infant has died from a rare and devastating disease transmitted by mosquitoes that causes inflammation of the brain, health officials said Thursday. It was the second death in Hillsborough County this month from eastern equine encephalitis, prompting officials to issue a public health alert and step up mosquito spraying around the Tampa Bay area.
ATLANTA (AP) -- More bystanders are willing to attempt CPR if an emergency dispatcher gives them firm and direct instructions -- especially if they can just press on the chest and skip the mouth-to-mouth, according to new research.
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) -- Officials in the Dominican Republic are warning people living near low-lying areas flooded by recent rainstorms to be on alert for two diseases that have already killed 53 people and sickened thousands.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Officials in Washington, D.C., have launched a citywide effort to promote the use of female condoms, in hopes making them available can help stop the spread of HIV in that city.
(USA TODAY) -- Researchers have identified gaps in the quality of heart failure care provided to thousands of patients by cardiologists who don't always follow treatment guidelines.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Facing surgery? You could receive blood that's been stored for a week, or three weeks, or nearly six -- and there's growing concern that people who get the older blood might not fare as well.
MADRID (AP) -- A Spanish man who underwent the world's first full face transplant appeared before TV cameras Monday for the first time since his surgery, thanking his doctors and the family of the donor.
KAMPALA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- International programmes fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS are facing a ten-billion-dollar shortfall this year, the head of UNAIDS said Monday in the Ugandan capital Kampala.
TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese women are expected to live almost 86 1/2 years, topping the world longevity ratings for the 25th straight year, the government reported Monday.
CHICAGO (AP) -- More than 70,000 children and teens go to the emergency room each year for injuries and complications from medical devices, and contact lenses are the leading culprit, the first detailed national estimate suggests.
VIENNA (AP) -- President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have pledged the support of the United States in the global fight against AIDS.
DENVER (The New York Times News Service) -- Nurse Jan Smith leaned in to adjust electrodes wired to Thomas McCarty's scalp.
VIENNA (AP) -- The U.N.'s top investigator on torture and punishment warned Friday that overcrowded prisons are breeding grounds for AIDS.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Most women who've had a C-section, and many who've had two, should be allowed to try labor with their next baby, say new guidelines -- a step toward reversing the "once a cesarean, always a cesarean" policies taking root in many hospitals.
ATLANTA (AP) -- U.S. health officials say a fungus usually found in the tropics has taken root in the Pacific Northwest and has been blamed for at least 60 illnesses and 15 deaths.
VIENNA (AP) -- Rich countries must give more for the fight against AIDS or risk jeopardizing progress in battling the disease, participants at an international conference urged Thursday.
VIENNA (AP) -- Thousands of AIDS activists rallied in downtown Vienna with singer Annie Lennox Tuesday to demand more rights for people with the disease.
VIENNA (AP) -- The U.N. AIDS agency has tapped some big names -- including former basketball star Magic Johnson -- to boost global efforts to prevent the spread of HIV.
(The New York Times News Service) -- Prescription drugs have killed 1,200 people in Harris County since 2006 -- casualties in a deadly American drug war in which dealers are often doctors and pharmaceutical companies rather than narcotics cartels.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal health officials are barring new patients from enrolling in a safety study of GlaxoSmithKline's controversial diabetes pill Avandia, a week after a panel of experts ruled that the drug increases heart risks.
MONTREAL (Canadian Press) -- A study conducted at the Montreal Heart Institute has yielded a surprising result -- living with children is linked to a reduction in physical activity.
NEW YORK, N.Y. (Canadian Press) -- Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck says he's been diagnosed with an eye disease that could eventually blind him.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Don't be offended if your doctor writes that you're SOB, or that an exam detected BS.
MYRTLE GROVE, La. (AP) -- A boom from the speakers at church was all it took to send Paula Walker back to that moment of horror on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal health advisers said unanimously Tuesday that a follow-up study of the Roche drug Avastin failed to show meaningful benefits for breast cancer patients.
VIENNA (AP) -- Experts and activists are warning that AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia is on the rise even as a global conference reports progress on other fronts.
GENEVA (AP) -- The World Trade Organization has launched a formal investigation into whether U.S. tobacco control laws are illegally preventing imports of clove-flavored cigarettes from Indonesia.
CHICAGO (AP) -- For the first time, a large study suggests a higher rate of childhood cancer among test-tube babies, but researchers say the reason probably has nothing to do with how the infants were conceived.
(Associated Press) -- Provocative new research shows that treating people with the AIDS virus can provide a powerful bonus: It cuts the risk that they will infect others.
VIENNA (AP) -- World leaders lack the political will to ensure that everyone infected with HIV and AIDS gets treatment, the head of a meeting dedicated to the disease said Sunday.
(The New York Times News Service) -- Dr. Mary Newport sees the symptoms more and more in the babies she treats: oddly stiff limbs, severe tremors, vomiting, diarrhea, insomnia, crying that never stops.
VANCOUVER (Canadian Press) -- Two Vancouver-based groups that do research on HIV-AIDS and drug policy say the war on drugs waged by many governments, including the government of Canada, has failed to curb illegal drug use and is actually fuelling the spread of the disease.
VIENNA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Governments in Eastern Europe and Central Asia need to reach out to street children and mothers infected with the AIDS virus if the region's epidemic -- the fastest growing in the world -- is to be reversed, a United Nations report said Monday.
VIENNA (AP) -- The number of people taking crucial AIDS drugs climbed by a record 1.2 million last year to 5.2 million overall, the World Health Organization said Monday -- but Bill Clinton says that's still not nearly enough.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Poverty is perhaps the most important factor in whether inner-city heterosexuals are infected with the AIDS virus, according to the first government study of its kind.
PRAGUE (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- For Pepino, a 44-year-old Czech drug addict, needle exchanges are a routine affair. He started doing it in 1986, three years before the Velvet Revolution ended Communist rule and opened his country to visitors from around the world.
(Associated Press) -- For the first time, a vaginal gel has proved capable of blocking the AIDS virus: It cut in half a woman's chances of getting HIV from an infected partner in a study in South Africa. Scientists called it a breakthrough in the long quest for a tool to help women whose partners won't use condoms.
VIENNA (AP) -- Two heavy hitters on the world health stage -- Bill Clinton and Bill Gates -- called Monday for a more efficient fight worldwide against the AIDS virus.
GENEVA (AP) -- The World Health Organization found itself Friday in the strange position of defending North Korea's health care system from an Amnesty International report, three months after WHO's director described medicine in the totalitarian state as the envy of the developing world.
GAITHERSBURG, MD. (AP) -- A panel of federal health experts dealt a surprising setback Thursday to a highly anticipated anti-obesity pill from Vivus Inc., saying the drug's side effects outweigh its ability to help patients lose weight.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal health scientists said Friday that follow-up studies of a Roche breast cancer drug show it failed to slow tumor growth or extend patient lives, opening the door for a potential withdrawal in that indication.
(World Entertainment News Network) -- Patti Hansen's cancer battle took its toll on her husband Keith Richards -- the rocker was convinced he would lose his wife after doctors found a tumour in her bladder.
(The New York Times News Service) -- A national report revealed Thursday that more people than ever need treatment for addiction to pain pills. Admissions for therapy more than quadrupled in the last decade across the U.S., a trend mirrored in Florida.
(NewsRx.com) -- Women who experience early menopause appear to have more than twice the risk of having a heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular disease event later in life than do women who do not go through early menopause, a new study indicates. The results will be presented Saturday at The Endocrine Society's 92nd Annual Meeting in San Diego (see also Heart Disease).
TORONTO (Canadian Press) -- U.S. scientists are reporting they've made progress in the search for what's called the Holy Grail of influenza research -- a universal flu vaccine.
WASHINGTON (Canadian Press) -- Former U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney announced Wednesday that he has undergone surgery to install a small pump to help his heart work, as the 69-year-old enters a new phase of what he called "increasing congestive heart failure."
WASHINGTON (The New York Times News Service) -- The White House on Tuesday announced the nation's most sweeping national strategy ever for fighting HIV/AIDS, an effort that aims to cut infection rates by 25 percent in five years by shifting money to help gay and African American men who are at highest risk of contracting the disease.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- From counseling for kids who struggle with their weight, to cancer screenings for their parents, preventive health care will soon be available at no out-of-pocket cost under consumer rules the Obama administration unveiled Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Democrats are moving forward on first lady Michelle Obama's vision for healthier school lunches, propelling legislation that calls for tougher standards governing food in school and more meals for hungry children.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A majority of federal health experts voted Wednesday to keep the controversial diabetes pill Avandia on the market despite evidence that it increases the risk of heart attack.
ATLANTA (AP) -- An experimental diet pill helped about half the people who tried it lose some weight and keep it off a year later, without the heart problems that some earlier drugs caused, a study found.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Abortion opponents are raising questions about a critical new insurance program under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law.
(Associated Press) -- A Nestle subsidiary has agreed to stop advertising that its children's drink Boost Kid Essentials can prevent illness, increase immunity and reduce school absences, the Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday in announcing two settlements.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Your doctor could be drunk, addicted to drugs or outright incompetent, but other physicians may not blow the whistle.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration on Tuesday rolled out an ambitious five-year plan for moving doctors and hospitals to computerized medical records, promising greater safety for patients and lower costs.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- President Barack Obama is trying to bring home some of the much-lauded strategies his predecessor used to fight AIDS around the world.
(Associated Press) -- About 137,000 pieces of children's jewelry sold at two stores popular with pre-teen girls -- Justice and Limited Too -- have been recalled for high levels of the toxic metal cadmium.
NEW YORK, N.Y. (Canadian Press) -- The wife of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is a cancer survivor.
BEIJING (AP) -- Every summer during the height of the rainy season, villagers of all ages in a corner of southwestern China would suddenly die of cardiac arrest.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Danish company has delivered the first 1 million doses of a next-generation smallpox vaccine to the U.S. national stockpile, a vaccine reserved for people with weakened immune systems.
LONDON (AP) -- The number of young people infected with HIV in Africa is falling in 16 of the 25 countries hardest hit by the virus, according to a new report by a U.N. agency.
(USA TODAY) -- Marilyn Blum is like a lot of wives with a retired husband around the house. She loves the man she has been married to for 33 years but says, "It's just not normal to be together 24/7."
(USA TODAY) -- President Obama will gather AIDS experts at the White House today to launch the first national strategy designed to cut new infections, boost the number of people who get tested and treated, and reduce disparities in access to care.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Alas, here's more proof that most people have habits that aren't very sanitary -- and sometimes can be plain disgusting.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- What if my blood sugar's too high today? Is it time for my blood pressure pill? With nagging text messages or more customized two-way interactions, researchers are trying to harness the power of cell phones to help fight chronic diseases.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dieters, doctors and investors get their first extensive look at the first of a trio of new weight loss drugs this week. The hope is that the new drugs can succeed where many others have failed: delivering significant weight loss without risky side effects.
(Associated Press) -- Scientists are reporting advances in detecting and predicting Alzheimer's disease at a conference in Honolulu this week, plus more proof that getting enough exercise and vitamin D may lower your risk.
LONDON (AP) -- The European agency that evaluates medicine said Friday it will review the safety of the diabetes drug Avandia following research suggesting it is linked to a higher risk of heart problems, strokes and deaths in older adults.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A review by federal health scientists reinforces potential ties between the diabetes pill Avandia and heart attack and death, opening the door for government action, including a possible withdrawal of the once blockbuster drug.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- For nearly a decade, Cristina Iaboni tried to tame her diabetes the usual way, through daily shots of insulin and other medicine.
WASHINGTON (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- US scientists have discovered the most effective HIV antibodies to date which can be used to find a vaccine for the virus, Science reported Thursday.
PARIS (AP) -- A 35-year-old man with a genetic disorder has an entirely new face -- including tear ducts that cry, and a chin that sprouts stubble -- thanks to a rare full-face transplant performed by a French surgeon and hailed as a new advance in improving the lives of the disfigured.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The health care overhaul passed earlier this year will help many uninsured get coverage starting in 2014. But until then, Americans who lose employer coverage may find buying insurance on their own unaffordable.
DENVER (The New York Times News Service) -- Christopher Prior practiced medicine in Littleton, Colorado Springs and the army before deciding he wanted more freedom in providing care.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. health officials have approved a first-of-its-kind technology to counter a leading cause of blindness in older adults -- a tiny telescope implanted inside the eye.
(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) -- Major league teams are standing watch over their pitchers. Not only are pitch counts studied, but a hurler's mechanics are monitored by a computer to see if he puts too much stress on his body.
TORONTO (Canadian Press) -- An experimental drug designed to attack breast cancer cells caused by a particular genetic mutation appears to show some promise in arresting the growth of tumours, researchers say.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Routine screening for osteoporosis should include all younger postmenopausal women who have at least the same chance of a bone break as an older woman, a government task force said Monday.
LONDON (Canadian Press) -- Short people have a 50 per cent higher risk of having a heart problem or dying from one than tall people, a new study says, though weight, blood pressure and smoking habits remain more important factors.
ROME (AP) -- Thousands of Italian farmers and farm activists massed at Italy's border with Austria on Tuesday to protest the importation of what they called sub-quality foods pretending to be from Italy.
ATLANTA (AP) -- More older Americans are getting tested for colon cancer, with nearly two out of three getting recommended screenings.
(USA TODAY) -- Places provide free housing for veterans, families near VA hospitals
CHICAGO (AP) -- Giving teens 30 extra minutes to start their school day leads to more alertness in class, better moods, less tardiness, and even healthier breakfasts, a small study found.
BERLIN (AP) -- Faced with a ballooning deficit in Germany's health care system, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government decided Tuesday to raise premiums and cut into the profits of doctors, dentists, hospitals and pharmaceutical manufacturers.
BERLIN (AP) -- Embryos created during in vitro fertilization can be screened for genetic defects before being implanted in the womb, a German high court said in a landmark ruling Tuesday.
GENEVA (AP) -- An international food safety meeting set the first global limits for melamine contamination in food and infant formula, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Emergency rooms, the only choice for patients who can't find care elsewhere, may grow even more crowded with longer wait times under the nation's new health law.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Last year's West Nile virus season was the mildest in eight years, and just one case of serious illness has been reported so far this year.
(The New York Times News Service) -- The prescription painkiller oxycodone killed more Floridians than ever last year, and nowhere was that more evident than Pinellas and Pasco counties.
(Associated Press) -- When a drug's risks exceed its benefits, the federal Food and Drug Administration may ask or order a company to withdraw it from the market, or a company may do so on its own. Here are some drugs withdrawn in recent years.
CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt is implementing a new tax on tobacco products, raising cigarette prices by as much as 40 percent in this heavy smoking nation.
(Associated Press) -- The arthritis pill Vioxx was withdrawn but menopause hormones were not, even though both were tied to heart risks. A multiple sclerosis medicine was pulled and later allowed back on.
HONG KONG (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Hong Kong researchers have developed a treatment for people infected by swine flu using the antibodies from blood plasma from patients who recovered from the disease, a media report said Thursday.
ATLANTA (AP) -- About a quarter of the swine flu vaccine produced for the U.S. public has expired -- meaning that a whopping 40 million doses worth about $260 million is being written off as trash.
MEXICO CITY (Canadian Press) -- The government of Mexico lifted the alert for swine flu Tuesday, officially ending the health emergency in the country where the illness first appeared 14 months ago.
LONDON (AP) -- British officials say there may be twice as many cases of Huntington's disease in Britain than previously thought.
MADRID (AP) -- Spain's highest court has agreed to study whether a new abortion law allowing the procedure without restrictions in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy is constitutional.
TORONTO (Canadian Press) -- Exercise has been linked to possible benefits in staving off dementia in numerous studies in the past decade, but a new look at the topic suggests the earlier the better.
LONDON (AP) -- Health officials say a new meningitis vaccine will help prevent epidemics in Africa for the first time, revolutionizing how doctors fight outbreaks of the deadly disease.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- South African health officials said Tuesday they are alarmed by the rise in deaths among men who have had botched traditional circumcisions, after 39 young men died in the last month after undergoing the rite of passage into manhood.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Ninety percent of physicians surveyed said doctors overtest and overtreat to protect themselves from malpractice lawsuits.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Should healthy people with low cholesterol take a pill to lower their cholesterol even more in hopes of preventing heart problems? The question is dividing heart doctors and confusing patients.
SHANGHAI (AP) -- American and Shanghai health authorities opened an epidemiology center in the Chinese city Tuesday to train experts in sleuthing out ways to prevent chronic and epidemic diseases.
(USA TODAY) -- Half of breast cancer patients stop taking key medications ahead of schedule, a decision that can increase their risk of relapse and death, a new study shows.
WASHINGTON (Canadian Press) -- Former Vice-President Dick Cheney has been discharged from the hospital after his latest bout with heart-related trouble.
TORONTO (Canadian Press) -- A study has found that giving a certain antibiotic to elderly patients already taking commonly prescribed cardiovascular drugs can be dangerous.
CHICAGO (AP) -- A new study led by a federal drug safety expert ties the controversial diabetes drug Avandia to a higher risk of heart problems, strokes and deaths in older adults, and says it is more dangerous than a rival drug, Actos.
WASHINGTON (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by the US government seeking billions of dollars in payments from the tobacco industry under anti-racketeering laws.
LONDON (AP) -- Doctors could one day use a blood test to predict decades in advance when women will go into menopause, scientists say. In research to be presented on Monday at a European fertility conference in Rome, Iranian experts say their preliminary study could be a first step toward developing a tool to help women decide when they want to have children.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cancer survivors, better work up a sweat.
CHANDIPUR, Bangladesh (AP) -- Hanufa Bibi stoops in a worn sari and mismatched flip-flops to work the hand pump on her backyard well. Spurts of clear water wash grains of rice from her hands, but she can never get them clean.
VIENNA (AP) -- Policies that criminalize drug users fuel the spread of AIDS and should be reformed, experts preparing for an international conference said Monday.
(Associated Press) -- The doctors finally let Rosaria Vandenberg go home.
LONDON (AP) -- Overweight women have a much higher risk of a miscarriage after having in-vitro fertilization compared with slim women, new research says.
(The New York Times News Service) -- Two teams of researchers from New England have built living, breathing lung tissue in the laboratory -- feats of engineering that could speed up the development of new drugs and bring researchers a step closer to the tantalizing dream of growing replacement lungs for patients.
GENEVA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- The United Nations launched a commission Thursday to investigate punitive laws that it says harm global efforts to respond to the decades-old HIV epidemic.
NEW YORK, N.Y. (Canadian Press) -- Guy Jacobson says he doesn't know how to stop natural disasters, but knows how to "sabotage businesses" that make money using children for sex.
LONDON (AP) -- Human fetuses cannot feel pain before the age of 24 weeks, a British medical association said Friday -- delivering a setback for anti-abortion activists campaigning to lower the country's 24-week time limit.
THE ACREAGE, Fla. (The New York Times News Service) -- On an MRI, a glioblastoma brain tumor looks like a ghost, a soft gray outline of an early death.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- A two-year effort to contain and eliminate a drug-resistant strain of falciparum malaria near the Cambodian-Thai border has shown signs of success, the government said Friday.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Most U.S. adults should eat less than a teaspoon of salt each day, but a new government report says just 1 in 18 meet that goal.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's an early step toward one day building new lungs: Yale University researchers took apart and regrew a rat's lung, and then transplanted it and watched it breathe.
RINGTOWN, Pa. (Canadian Press) -- A 19-year-old man riding his bicycle across the country to raise awareness and money for breast cancer research was struck and killed by an SUV in New Mexico.
(Associated Press) -- From long-term cancer risks to radiation overdose mistakes, CT scans pose a growing danger to the American public and need more regulation to improve their safety, imaging experts write in a leading medical journal.
WASHINGTON (The New York Times News Service) -- Texas medical officials told Congress on Wednesday that U.S.-Mexican cooperation is essential to coping with tuberculosis outbreaks along the border.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Patients will be told when they're being treated by rookie doctors, who would get shorter shifts and better supervision under proposed work changes for medical residents.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Some recounted their days at a smoldering ground zero. Some fought back tears. Some complained that no amount of money would make them whole.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Dozens of people who were blinded or otherwise suffered severe eye damage when they were splashed with caustic chemicals had their sight restored with transplants of their own stem cells - a stunning success for the burgeoning cell-therapy field, Italian researchers reported Wednesday.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- A doctor who took part in a double hand transplant on a young Polish soldier earlier this month said Wednesday the operation was a success and the patient is doing fine.
LONDON (AP) -- Children whose mothers lived close to a mobile phone tower while pregnant did not appear to be at any higher risk of cancer than children whose mothers lived farther away, a new study finds.
MBABANE, Swaziland (AP) -- Swaziland's death rate more than doubled in a decade, proof of the toll of AIDS, statisticians in this southern African kingdom said Wednesday.
WIMBLEDON, England (USA TODAY) -- Through her decades in the public sphere, Martina Navratilova has been many things to many people -- tennis champion, fitness pioneer, gay rights activist, and now, cancer survivor.
(USA TODAY) -- For humans, the psychological effects of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could be as devastating as the physical, say experts who will speak at an Institute of Medicine workshop today in New Orleans.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- Brazilians are battling the bulge.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Doctors always said allergies and asthma were behind Laura Mentch's repeated lung and sinus infections. Only when she turned 50 did she discover the real culprit - a disease notorious for destroying children's lungs.
GENEVA (AP) -- The World Health Organization said Tuesday that two members of an expert panel reviewing the global body's response to the swine flu outbreak have resigned over concerns about perceived conflict of interest.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- A new report on the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals says 10 African countries have halved their poverty rates but that child mortality has increased in six sub-Saharan nations.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Wondering whether an illness or injury warrants a trip to the emergency room is a common quandary. With severe, life-threatening conditions, call 911. Here are some other symptoms experts say require an ER visit:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Part listening, part cajoling, an innovative approach to resolving medical malpractice cases could become a model for courts around the country thanks to a pioneering judge who invested his own time in learning about medicine.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Fast decisions on life-and-death cases are the bread and butter of hospital emergency rooms. Nowhere do doctors face greater pressures to overtest and overtreat.
BEIJING (Asia Pulse Pte Ltd) -- Younger, unmarried men around the world are least likely to be aware of hypertension (high blood pressure) and less likely to be receiving treatment. Whereas older women, are most aware of hypertension according to data presented today at the World Congress of Cardiology (WCC) Scientific Sessions in Beijing, China.
ATLANTA (AP) -- When an Associated Press reporter went scuba diving in the oil-streaked Gulf of Mexico this month, people commenting on websites worried about his health. But at the same time, the oil sure didn't bother some beachgoers in Alabama.
BEIJING (Asia Pulse Pte Ltd) -- Seven out of 10 men admitted to hospital for a heart attack (acute ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI)) had erectile dysfunction (ED) in the six months prior to their admission according to new data presented today at the World Congress of Cardiology (WCC) Scientific Sessions in Beijing, China.
MUNICH (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Cardiologists are warning heart patients they face a higher risk of experiencing cardiac arrest during the soccer World Cup finals in South Africa. The German Society of Cardiologists in Private Practice says patients with a prior history of heart ailments should avoid getting too excited while watching matches.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (Canadian Press) -- Malaysia began enforcing a ban on small cigarette packets, the health minister said Monday, after a short-lived postponement of the move caused a tobacco company to threaten legal action.
GENEVA (AP) -- The World Health Organization on Friday issued its first-ever guidance on how to use more than 240 essential medicines for children under 13.
WASHINGTON (Canadian Press) -- U.S. government health experts said Thursday a new type of morning-after contraceptive that works longer than existing drugs is safe and effective.
LONDON (AP) -- A leading medical journal says the world could boost its blood supply from young donors by tapping into social networks like Facebook and Google.
CINCINNATI (Canadian Press) -- Ken Griffey Sr. wasn't entirely surprised when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006. He knew that it ran in the family, with four uncles succumbing to the disease.
ATLANTA (AP) -- South African surgeons have transplanted kidneys between donors and patients who were both infected with the AIDS virus - a medical first that has some U.S. doctors buzzing about whether it could be tried here.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to tighten rules protecting the safety of water in public systems.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- New restrictions on mailing tobacco products are about to take effect.
ATLANTA (AP) -- For the first time, abuse of painkillers and other medication is sending as many people to the emergency room as the use of illegal drugs.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- Thousands of South African protesters marched on the U.S. consulate Thursday to demand the U.S. increase its AIDS funding for Africa, weeks after U.S. officials said their biggest AIDS fund would not substantially rise.
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Thirty-five years after the Vietnam War, a $300 million price tag has been placed on the most contentious legacy still tainting U.S.-Vietnam relations: Agent Orange.
BLANTYRE, Malawi (AP) -- More than 100 members of a Christian religious sect have barricaded themselves in an abandoned building in southern Malawi over their refusal to give their children the measles vaccine, a regional health official said Wednesday.
MADRID (AP) -- Two organizations that have worked together to promote a global strategy for ethical organ donations were awarded Spain's Prince of Asturias award for international cooperation on Wednesday.
LONDON (AP) -- Scientists say being fat can be bad for the bedroom, especially if you're a woman.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An advisory panel is encouraging the government to recommend that Americans reduce their salt intake -- even though they acknowledge that it won't be easy.
(USA TODAY) -- The punishment is brutal -- three push-ups -- each time one of the children kicks a soccer ball into a cone.
(USA TODAY) -- As Lance Somerfeld learned, babies are excellent teachers.
LONDON (AP) -- The family of a 28-year-old British woman who unknowingly received a lung transplant from a smoker says she would have been "horrified" and have lodged a complaint.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- D.J. Soviero wanted the least treatment that would beat back her small, early-stage breast cancer, but her first doctor insisted she had only one option: tumor removal followed by radiation and chemotherapy.
LONDON (AP) -- A cheap drug that can stop bleeding in recently injured accident patients could potentially save the lives of tens of thousands worldwide, a new study says.
(The New York Times News Service) -- Donovan Johns was 3 years old when he was diagnosed with autism after his parents noticed he struggled with speaking, expressing his needs and interacting with others.
MUNICH (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Results of a new German study indicate passive smoking can increase the risk of contracting type 2 diabetes. The survey was carried out by the German Diabetes Centre and the Helmholtz Centre and looked at 1,351 people. Until now scientific studies had only shown a link between active smoking and diabetes.
CHICAGO (AP) -- One in five medical claims is processed inaccurately by commercial health insurers, often leaving physicians shortchanged, according to the nation's largest doctor's group.
BERLIN (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Mothers who smoke not only damage their children during pregnancy but can also negatively affect their development in the breast-feeding phase. Nicotine and other dangerous substances contained in tobacco enter breast milk and then the child's system, according to a new report from the German Cancer Research Centre.
LONDON (AP) -- Some of the world's most popular blood pressure pills may slightly increase your risk of getting cancer, but doctors say it's too soon to ditch the drugs, according to new research.
(Associated Press) -- We fret about airport scanners, power lines, cell phones and even microwaves. It's true that we get too much radiation. But it's not from those sources -- it's from too many medical tests.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Millions of cancer survivors have put off getting medical care because they couldn't afford it, according to a new study.
WASHINGTON (USA TODAY) -- The Pentagon has failed to comply with a congressional directive to give all troops tests before and after they serve in combat to measure their thinking abilities and uncover possible brain injuries, military records show.
YARGALMA, Nigeria (AP) -- Mound after tiny mound of red clay earth dots the cemetery on the outskirts of this impoverished Nigerian village where grieving parents come to pray.
DARETA, Nigeria (AP) -- As masked Nigerian environmental experts examined a communal well in a village where more than 60 children were killed by lead poisoning, barefoot kids streaked with dust sat on the contaminated ground, running their hands through the silt and sucking on their fingers.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In an unusual step, a dozen competing drug companies have agreed to share data on thousands of Alzheimer's patients in hopes that the extra information will spark new ideas for treatments.
GENEVA (AP) -- The World Health Organization says people make a total of 93 million blood donations worldwide every year, but the rate of donation in poor countries is far too low.
LONDON (AP) -- For thousands of Catholics, the 13th-century Italian Saint Rose of Viterbo had miraculous powers that allowed her to raise someone from the dead and survive the flames of a burning pyre.
LONDON (AP) -- Britain's health watchdog on Thursday recommended against buying a breast cancer drug for patients with advanced disease.
(Daily Mail) -- A simple test that would revolutionise the diagnosis of autism could be available within just three years.
CAIRO (Canadian Press) -- Egypt is taking its first serious stab at clamping down on smoking with a campaign launched Thursday to enforce a ban in the scenic seaside city of Alexandria, no small feat in a nation where four out of 10 men use tobacco.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators have warned Pfizer for failing to promptly report complaints with its drugs that may have involved serious injury.
LONDON (AP) -- Short people have a 50 percent higher risk of having a heart problem or dying from one than tall people, a new study says, though weight, blood pressure and smoking habits remain more important factors.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Doctors reported gains against nearly every form of cancer at a conference that ended this week. Yet when Will Thomas heard about an advance against prostate cancer, he wanted to know just one thing: "Is it a cure?"
MOSCOW (AP) -- A Russian official says the government is considering more than doubling the minimum price of vodka in three years.
(Canadian Press) -- New research will help doctors identify stroke patients who are the best candidates to have brain-damaging blood clots sucked out by a vacuum cleaner device.
(International Herald Tribune) -- For many women with early-stage breast cancer, treatment may become considerably less arduous, researchers say.
CHICAGO (AP) -- A new federal study finds many same-day surgery centers - where patients get such things as foot operations and pain injections - have serious problems with infection control.
GENEVA (AP) -- The head of the World Health Organization said Tuesday that her decisions about swine flu were not influenced by advisers' links to pharmaceutical companies, which were pointed out in a critical journal article this month.
(Associated Press) -- Back pain can be one of the most debilitating kinds of pain, but most people get better with time.
LONDON (Canadian Press) -- Officials urged Bristol-Myers Squibb not to shut down a plant in France which makes AIDS drugs, saying the move will jeopardize the lives of thousands of babies.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- "Why did they cut you?" The shocking question came from a respected spine surgeon tracked down by Keith Swenson, who was still in severe pain after an earlier back operation.
(USA TODAY) -- College students today show less empathy toward others compared with college students in decades before, a study from the University of Michigan says.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More medical care won't necessarily make you healthier -- it may make you sicker. It's an idea that technology-loving Americans find hard to believe.
TORONTO (Canadian Press) -- Whether someone newly diagnosed with cancer decides to tell a lot of people -- or just a few -- is a highly personal decision, says a medical social worker who counsels cancer patients.
TORONTO (Canadian Press) -- Cynthia Mulligan is being treated for breast cancer. When her blond hair began to fall out she had it cut and went shopping for a wig with her young daughters.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Researchers have scored the first big win against melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. An experimental drug significantly improved survival in a major study of people with very advanced disease.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Doctors are reporting a key advance in treating men with cancer that has started to spread beyond the prostate: survival is significantly better if radiation is added to standard hormone treatments.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bloodletting for a cold? X-rays to see if your shoes fit?
GENEVA (AP) -- The World Health Organization says cholera is spreading fast in Somalia as people flee fighting between the government and rebels.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Cadmium has been discovered in the painted design on "Shrek"-themed drinking glasses being sold nationwide at McDonald's, forcing the burger giant to recall 12 million of the cheap U.S.-made collectibles while dramatically expanding contamination concerns about the toxic metal beyond imported children's jewelry.
LONDON (AP) -- For children in Bangladesh, losing a mother -- but not a father -- can be deadly, a new study says.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- School lunches that are good for kids -- and kids will actually eat? That's a job for America's top chefs.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Oil has now washed up on the beaches of three Gulf states. How dangerous is it?
PARIS (AP) -- A report released by the Council of Europe on Friday accuses the World Health Organization and European governments of vastly exaggerating the public health risks of swine flu and making secretive decisions that benefited pharmaceutical companies.
GENEVA (AP) -- The head of the World Health Organization says swine flu is still a pandemic even though the period of most intense activity appears to have passed.
LONDON (AP) -- Running on empty may not be such a bad idea after all.
ATLANTA (AP) -- A new report shows one in five high school students have taken a prescription drug that they didn't get from a doctor.
(USA TODAY) -- Once an economic engine whose marketing dollars blazed a trail for much of the sport's expansion, the era of tobacco sponsorship in NASCAR will be extinguished quietly this month.
WINDHOEK, Namibia (AP) -- Supporters of three HIV-positive women in Namibia who say they were sterilized without their consent held protests to support the women's decision to sue the government, a legal aid group said Wednesday.
LONDON (AP) -- Genes that make women more susceptible to breast cancer don't have any link to lifestyle factors that also raise their risk, a new study says.
ATLANTA (AP) -- A growing number of teen girls say they use the rhythm method for birth control, and more teens also think it's OK for an unmarried female to have a baby, according to a government survey released Wednesday. The report may help explain why the teen pregnancy rate is no longer dropping.
(USA TODAY) -- An experimental vaccine prevented breast cancer in genetically engineered mice, according to a preliminary study in the June 10 issue of Nature Medicine. The vaccine has not been tested in humans.
WELLINGTON, N.Z. (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Airlines and health authorities need to consider how they can prevent sick people from boarding flights, according to New Zealand researchers who said Wednesday there was a "small but measurable risk" of contracting swine flu in the air.
WASHINGTON (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Katitia Pitts stands before a small group of people at a health centre in Washington and waves a female condom in the air.
DENVER (The New York Times News Service) -- A study involving 348 Colorado patients with hypertension could change the way doctors across the country monitor patients with high blood pressure, diabetes and perhaps a host of other diseases.
(Associated Press) -- Paying for surgery these days requires more than pulling out your insurance card and hoping for the best, even for those with good insurance. Doing a little homework can help you save money in some cases and avoid surprises when bills arrive in the weeks after a procedure.
ATLANTA (AP) -- How much money would it take to get you to lose some serious weight? $100? $500?
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ten minutes of brisk exercise triggers metabolic changes that last at least an hour. The unfair news for panting newbies: The more fit you are, the more benefits you just might be getting.
BERLIN (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Physical exercise helps to regenerate brain cells that are lost due to ageing, according to a study by German researchers.
ATLANTA (AP) -- The pill is still the No. 1 contraceptive for American women, but it's even more popular in other countries, according to the first government report comparing nations.
GENEVA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Young girls in many countries are now as likely as boys to pick up smoking, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned Friday.
LONDON (AP) -- Some heroin addicts who got the drug under medical supervision had a better chance of kicking the habit than those who got methadone, a new study says.
ATLANTA (AP) -- U.S. health officials have for the first time released contraception safety guidelines for more than 1 million women who have had weight-loss surgery or have certain medical conditions.
NEW YORK (AP) -- A prominent organ-transplant hospital wasn't to blame for the death of a man who became riddled with cancer after getting a kidney from a donor who unknowingly had uterine cancer, jurors found Friday.
(Associated Press) -- With half of all men in some developing countries already hooked on cigarettes, the tobacco industry is now courting lucrative new customers -- young women, a report said Thursday.
(The New York Times News Service) -- Everyone knows exercise can be good for body and mind. But even as doctors admonish young and old to get off the couch to stave off such diseases as diabetes and dementia, they cannot explain how exercise works.
BEIJING (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- The tenth employee of the year jumped to his death at an electronics factory in southern China, hours after the conglomerate's chairman visited the plant to try to stem a rash of suicides there.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Jurors are deliberating the case of a New York City man who received a donor kidney and died in what experts say may be the only known case of uterine cancer being transmitted by transplant.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Holy fish sticks! Scientists finally have some good news about fat in our foods.
GENEVA (AP) -- Swiss drug maker Novartis AG said Thursday it won't ask regulators for permission to market a new ovarian cancer drug after a late-stage trial proved disappointing.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A clearer, more meaningful standard for sunscreen labels is coming soon to a lotion near you, but not in time for the summer beach season that kicks off this Memorial Day weekend.
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico is looking to battle the bulging waistlines of its children by banning the sale of junk food in its schools, including many of the traditional treats generations of kids have grown up with.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal health regulators are investigating hundreds of consumer complaints involving children's medicines recalled by Johnson & Johnson last month, according to a congressional memo.
ATLANTA (AP) -- The pill is still the No. 1 contraceptive for American women, but it's even more popular in other industrialized countries.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Half of the 70 million Americans with high blood pressure are keeping it under control by taking medication, meeting a government goal set a decade ago and reducing their risk of life-threatening health problems, a study suggests.
VIENNA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Children might have a higher risk of certain skin rashes if their parents have an advanced education, researchers at the Medical University of Vienna said Tuesday.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Health officials say one reason so many American kids are overweight is that few have a nearby place to play and exercise.
NEW YORK (AP) -- If an alcohol-monitoring bracelet can keep celebrities like Lindsay Lohan from drinking, some parents might wonder, Can I get one for my teen?
(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) -- The effects of abuse, poverty and neglect that some kids carry with them to school can be like an extra backpack weighing heavily on weak shoulders.
(World Entertainment News Network) -- Brittany Murphy's widower Simon Monjack was in need of a heart bypass when he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest on Sunday night.
(World Entertainment News Network) -- Bret Michaels will undergo surgery later this year to mend his broken heart.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Children in the most rural areas of the United States are as likely to die by gunshot as kids in the biggest cities, a new analysis of nearly 24,000 deaths finds.
LONDON (AP) -- Child deaths worldwide seem to have fallen faster than officials thought, as a new study estimates far fewer children are dying every year than previously guessed by the United Nations.
TAMPA (The New York Times News Service) -- Dr. Amanda Smith is a specialist in treating Alzheimer's disease, so she's accustomed to desperate families grasping at hope as they watch their loved ones disappear into dementia.
HOUSTON (The New York Times News Service) -- Scientists hold in their hands a powerful therapy for many diseases.
CHICAGO (AP) -- The nation's largest pediatricians group is relaxing its stance against swimming lessons for children younger than 4.
(The New York Times News Service) -- Roughly 65 million doses of swine flu vaccine sit unused or expired in clinics, doctor's offices, and warehouses across the United States as the virus that once stoked fears of a devastating global epidemic has retreated. Most of the leftover shots and nasal spray, about 40 percent of what the federal government ordered, will be destroyed.
LONDON (AP) -- Britain's top medical group banned a doctor who was the first to publish peer-reviewed research suggesting a connection between a common vaccine and autism from practicing in the country, finding him guilty Monday of serious professional misconduct.
(The New York Times News Service) -- With prescription drug abuse and deaths making headlines all over the state, the public outcry for action is louder than ever.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Could a once-a-month alcoholism shot keep some of the highest-risk heroin addicts from relapse? A drug that wakes up narcoleptics treat cocaine addiction? An old antidepressant fight methamphetamine?
LIBBY, Mont. (AP) -- Gayla Benefield and Eva Thomson are sisters who have grown used to death. For two decades, they have watched asbestos from a nearby vermiculite mine strangle their parents, Thomson's husband, an aunt, several in-laws and numerous neighbors and friends.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Food and Drug Administration says it has approved the first diagnostic test for 2009 swine flu under its traditional approval system.
NEWTON, Mass. (AP) -- Federal regulators have accepted an application for a depression drug marketed by Clinical Data Inc., the company said Monday.
(Associated Press) -- Surviving a heart attack can kill your sex life.
LONDON (AP) -- The European Medicines Agency said the unexpected presence of a pig virus in GlaxoSmithKline's Rotarix vaccine poses no threat and should continue to be used, the drugmaker said Friday.
GENEVA (AP) -- Measles is making a rapid comeback in African, Asian and even some European countries despite being easily avoided through vaccination, the World Health Organizations said Friday as countries pledged to sharply cut infections and deaths worldwide by 2015.
(World Entertainment News Network) -- Rocker Bret Michaels has been discharged from a hospital in Los Angeles after suffering a "warning stroke" earlier this week (ends21May10).
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration said Friday it's offering $1 billion in seed money to small research firms in the hunt for promising medical breakthroughs.
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- A plan by the University of California, Berkeley to voluntarily test the DNA of incoming freshman has come under fire from critics who said the school was pushing an unproven technology on impressionable students.
(The New York Times News Service) -- Scientists announced Thursday that for the first time they have created a complete set of synthetic genes and implanted them into living bacteria that thrive -- an achievement that could ultimately lead to the creation of new synthetic biofuels and many other practical advances.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Ardi Rizal, 2, throws a tantrum when his parents refuse him a cigarette. His father gave him his first when he was just 18 months old.
(Associated Press) -- Researchers may finally be closing in on a way to screen healthy women for ovarian cancer -- a disease that rarely shows symptoms until it's too late to cure.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal health officials knowingly used flawed data in a study that calmed public fears about lead in the District of Columbia's drinking water in 2004, according to a congressional investigation released Thursday.
GENEVA (AP) -- For years, the world has been on the brink of wiping out polio, the deadly disease that can paralyze and kill children.
BERLIN (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- U.S. cyclist Floyd Landis has admitted to doping and said many of his top competitors, including seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, also used banned performance-enhancing drugs, according to media reports Thursday.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Wal-Mart said Wednesday it is pulling an entire line of Miley Cyrus-brand necklaces and bracelets from its shelves after tests performed for The Associated Press found the jewelry contained high levels of the toxic metal cadmium.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Health officials say many public swimming pools aren't as clean as they should be.
GENEVA (AP) -- Countries around the world are pledging to get tough with companies that market beer and liquor on social media networks such as Facebook, warning that such promotions threaten to entice a new generation into harmful drinking patterns.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Jewelry branded by Miley Cyrus and sold exclusively at Walmarts nationwide contain high levels of the toxic metal cadmium, an Associated Press investigation shows.
GENEVA (AP) -- An expert panel investigating the World Health Organization's response to last year's swine flu outbreak said Wednesday it wants to see confidential exchanges between the U.N. body and drug companies.
(USA TODAY) -- Pregnant women should limit their intake of canned foods and drinks, according to a report that finds 92% of food from metal cans is contaminated with an estrogen-like chemical called BPA, or bisphenol A.
(USA TODAY) -- Just as many new fathers as mothers develop postpartum depression, and about one in 10 parents have the condition, a new study says.
GENEVA (AP) -- Global efforts to control tuberculosis have failed and radical new approaches are needed, experts said Wednesday.
(USA TODAY) -- When you're young, you're more willing to take risks. Want to spend the summer herding sheep in New Zealand? Sure! Up for a cross-country road trip in a 1993 Mazda? Cool! Interested in bungee jumping? You bet!
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Try after try to make vaginal creams that could repel the AIDS virus have failed. Now researchers are testing if a drug used to treat HIV infection finally might give women a tool to prevent it - by infusing the medicine into vaginal gels and contraceptive-style rings.
GENEVA (AP) -- A global vaccine group says the World Health Organization will pass an important resolution later this week to step up efforts against pneumonia.
(USA TODAY) -- After age 50, daily stress and worry take a dive and happiness increases, according to an analysis of more than 340,000 adults questioned about the emotions they experienced "yesterday."
(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) -- Rosalynn Carter wasn't looking for a cause to champion. She just wanted votes for her husband.
(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) -- Dr. George Mensah spent nearly a decade near the top at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, helping lead the federal agency's efforts to fight strokes, heart attacks, heart disease and colorectal cancer.
CHICAGO (AP) -- The number of children hospitalized with dangerous drug-resistant staph infections surged 10-fold in recent years, a study found.
GENEVA (AP) -- Cell phone users worried about getting brain cancer aren't off the hook yet.
CHICAGO (AP) -- A new analysis of U.S. health data links children's attention-deficit disorder with exposure to common pesticides used on fruits and vegetables.
DAMASCUS, Syria (USA Today) -- In the shadow of the storied Umayyad Mosque, at the heart of Damascus' old city, one of the last classical Arabic storytellers takes to his throne in the Al-Nawfara Coffee Shop. Rashid Hallak, better known as Abu Shadi -- it means "father of Shadi," a common affectionate reference to a man's eldest son -- appears here almost every night.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The largest U.S. drugstore chain, Walgreen Co., said Wednesday it will hold off selling what was poised to be the first over-the-counter genetic test, after the Food and Drug Administration said the kit has not been proven effective.
DENVER (The New York Times News Service) -- The vast and chilly room buzzes with the whirl of 10 cooling fans and 62 giant freezers, machines so high tech they can send text messages to warn of intruders or when their temperature drops much below minus-112 degrees.
(The New York Times News Service) -- A proposal by Governor Deval Patrick's administration to ban baby bottles and toddler sippy cups containing a chemical suspected of hampering childhood development drew scrutiny yesterday from public health regulators, who expressed worries that the plastic ingredient might be replaced with something more dangerous.
(The New York Times News Service) -- Children diagnosed with sickle cell disease once were expected to live barely into their 20s, but medical breakthroughs have more than doubled that lifespan, and now researchers are focused on a new dilemma -- decades of living with the condition may lead to poor brain function.
GULERIA, India (AP) -- Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates traveled by boat Wednesday to a remote village in eastern India to check on the progress of a government campaign to eradicate polio that the billionaire is helping to fund.
(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) -- Some Georgians could soon be carrying a unique driver's license -- one that says they have post-traumatic stress disorder.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Federal regulators are expanding their investigation into children's jewelry that contains the toxic metal cadmium, promising that a recall announced Monday of "Best Friends" charm bracelets will not be the last.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bone marrow transplants are undergoing a quiet revolution: No longer just for cancer, research is under way to ease the risks so they can target more people with diseases from sickle cell to deadly metabolic disorders.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Federal regulators announced another recall of children's jewelry with high levels of the toxic metal cadmium Monday, also saying they've expanded their investigation in an effort to keep dangerous items off store shelves in the first place.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) ---A 15-year-old boy has died of diphtheria in Haiti, but there is no evidence the bacterial disease is spreading in the earthquake-ravaged country, U.N. health officials said Sunday.
ATLANTA (AP) -- The cost of treating cancer in the United States nearly doubled over the past two decades, but expensive cancer drugs may not be the main reason why, according to a surprising new study.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Plane tickets, check. Passport, check. Medical evacuation insurance? It's probably not something most people think about when packing for a vacation.
CANOGA PARK, Calif. (The New York Times News Service) -- The man known around the Northeast Valley as "el doctor Glenn" hauls a hulking fifth wheel trailer into a church parking lot and prepares for the evening ahead.
TAIJI, Japan (AP) -- Residents of the dolphin-hunting village depicted in Oscar documentary "The Cove" have dangerously high mercury levels, likely because of their fondness for dolphin and whale meat, a government lab said Sunday.
CHICAGO (AP) -- A world without "the pill" is unimaginable to many young women who now use it to treat acne, skip periods, improve mood and, of course, prevent pregnancy. They might be surprised to learn that U.S. officials announcing approval of the world's first oral contraceptive were uncomfortable.
DENVER (The New York Times News Service) -- Jeff Wilson saw a doctor recently about his high cholesterol -- and five other patients with the same problem came to his appointment.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal investigators are looking at a farm in Yuma, Ariz., as a possible source of a widespread E. coli outbreak in romaine lettuce, according to the distributor.
LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) -- Officials say radioactive water that leaked from the nation's oldest nuclear power plant has reached an aquifer that supplies drinking water to much of southern New Jersey.
(Associated Press) -- Every hour a baby is born in China with syphilis, as the world's fastest-growing epidemic of the disease is fueled by men with new money from the nation's booming economy, researchers say.
(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) -- What can you learn from four babies in four different countries engaged in 89 minutes of dialogue-free interaction with the world? A lot, it turns out.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Scientists are puzzling over a surprising increase in stomach cancer in young white adults, while rates in all other American adults have declined. Chances for developing stomach cancer are still very low in young adults but the incidence among 25 to 39 year old whites nonetheless climbed by almost 70 percent in the past three decades, a study found.
(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) -- There's a sizable food trend simmering on the sidelines to declare diets free from meat one day a week called "Meatless Monday."
(USA TODAY) -- Hospitals can slow the revolving door that shuttles heart failure patients back into bed within a month of going home by following up promptly to ensure patients get the right outpatient care, a study shows.
(Associated Press) -- The most valuable college graduation gift your child receives this spring might come from a health insurer.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Researchers are reporting the first scientific evidence that a hormone banned in sports can boost athletic performance.
MADRID (AP) -- A Spanish man who underwent a partial face transplant hugged his surgeon Tuesday and expressed gratitude to the donor's family as he appeared in public for the first time since the January operation.
CHICAGO (AP) -- What's the magic in Oregon that keeps kids lean? It's a mystery health officials would like to solve as they admit all states are failing -- by a mile -- to meet federal goals for childhood obesity.
(Associated Press)-- More than 30 states allow parents to extend their health insurance coverage to dependents beyond the typical cut-off ages of 19 or 22. But these are not blanket extensions. Many come tailored for that state.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- As controversial as mammograms are for women in their 40s, some get them even younger -- and new research casts doubt on their usefulness.
GENEVA (AP) -- The World Health Organization is launching a new website it hopes will cut the estimated 100,000 deaths from snake bites annually.
SAN FRANCISCO (The New York Times News Service) -- One April day after weeks of rain, Daniel Jiminez took a detour on his way to class: Dolores Park in San Francisco.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- People with severe asthma are getting a radically different treatment option: A way to snake a wire inside their lungs and melt off some of the tissue that squeezes their airways shut.
BORUNGO KHOLA, Bangladesh (AP) -- A pinch of salt. A fistful of sugar. A half liter of water.
CRYSTAL BEACH (The New York Times News Service) -- For almost four years, Lynn Locascio tried to convince herself that her son didn't have a drug problem.
LONDON (AP) -- Men in Iceland and women in Cyprus have the lowest risk of dying worldwide, a new study says.
LONDON (AP) -- The next time Stephen Quake is prescribed a drug, he says he won't worry about having a bad reaction. The Stanford University professor will simply consult his genome to see if there are any warning signs in his DNA.
GENEVA (AP) -- North Korea needs to strengthen its health system by modernizing medical equipment, ensuring sufficient supply of medicines and paying greater attention to malnutrition, the World Health Organization's director said Friday.
GENEVA (Canadian Press) -- The World Health Organization says 32 cases of polio have been confirmed in Tajikistan as health workers are setting up a nationwide vaccination campaign.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- New federal rules are in the works to limit the amount of mercury and other harmful pollutants released from boilers and solid waste incinerators.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A first-of-a-kind prostate cancer treatment that uses the body's immune system to fight the disease received federal approval Thursday, offering an important alternative to more intensive treatments like chemotherapy.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Fears of swine flu helped boost vaccination for ordinary seasonal flu last year, with a record 40 percent of adults and children getting the vaccine, federal health officials said Thursday.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- People with a common, obesity-related liver disease that has no known treatment got a surprising benefit from vitamin E pills, researchers reported Wednesday.
SAN FRANCISCO (The New York Times News Service) -- University of California, San Francisco, researchers have found a way to predict whether women with the earliest form of breast cancer are likely to develop deadly tumors -- a significant discovery that might save women who aren't at high risk from getting life-altering and unnecessary treatment.
(USA TODAY) -- A new study suggests CT heart scans may help millions of seemingly healthy people get a better fix on their heart risk, but critics say the price may be a higher cancer risk.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Use of high-tech imaging scans in older cancer patients has climbed substantially in recent years, a study found, raising concerns about costs and radiation exposure.
TORONTO (Canadian Press) -- Diabetics with impaired kidneys should avoid taking high doses of certain B vitamins because the supplements may do serious harm, researchers say.
LONDON (AP) -- A five-minute colon cancer test could reduce the number of deaths from the disease by about 40 percent, a new study says.
LOS ANGELES (Canadian Press) -- An already ailing Bret Michaels has been diagnosed with another medical malady.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- County officials in Silicon Valley trying to curb childhood obesity voted Tuesday to ban restaurants from giving away toys and other freebies that often come with high-calorie meals aimed at kids.
LIVERPOOL, England (AP) -- Health experts are holding up a perhaps unlikely country as a model for fighting AIDS in drug users: Iran.
WASHINGTON (AP)-- With a few drops of blood, scientists are creating a way to tell who's absorbed dangerous radiation levels, part of the government's preparations against a terrorist attack -- and research that just might point toward new cancer care, too.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Four common bad habits combined -- smoking, drinking too much, inactivity and poor diet -- can age you by 12 years, sobering new research suggests.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Sixteen food companies plan to cut the amount of salt in bacon, flavored rice and dozens of other products as part of a national effort to reduce American's sodium consumption by 20 percent.
(USA TODAY) -- After 40 intense minutes, C.R. Hooligan's and Shenanigans are tied 7-7, so the teams take the court for one more round.
MUMBAI, India (AP) -- It took two years of secret suffering and gut-wrenching diarrhea to make Lumkile Sizila face the fact that he had HIV.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- Brazil's health minister has a remedy for the nation's high-blood- pressure problem: More sex.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Federal health regulators are taking steps to improve the design and safety of drug pumps.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The big white pill was brought to her in an earthenware chalice. She'd already held hands with her two therapists and expressed her wishes for what it would help her do.
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- When this city of 8.7 million awoke one year ago to confusing news of a new virus, it sent the world on a wild six-month roller-coaster ride of fear and frantic action.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- An African bank, communications giant and popular chicken restaurant chain are taking on malaria, saying their business expertise might be the missing weapon in the fight against a disease that kills 1 million annually.
MADRID (AP) -- A hospital in Spain says it has carried out the world's first full-face transplant, giving a man a new nose, skin, jaws, cheekbones, teeth and other features after he lost his face in an accident.
ROME (AP) -- The Vatican will finance new research into the potential use of adult stem cells in the treatment of intestinal and possibly other diseases, officials announced Friday.
(USA TODAY) -- A year ago today, Lyn Finelli, chief of flu surveillance at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gathered her team and advised them to prepare for the worst.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Quick treatment with flu medicine saved the lives of many pregnant women who were stricken by swine flu last year, according to the most complete analysis of deaths among expectant mothers.
(Associated Press) -- No more letting industry help pay for developing medical guidelines. Restrictions on consulting deals. And no more pens with drug company names or other swag at conferences.
(USA TODAY) -- Worried about your cholesterol? You may need to cut back on your sugar intake, a new study suggests.
BOGOR, Indonesia (Canadian Press) -- Just a few miles after passing a towering Marlboro Man ad, a second billboard off the highway promotes cigarettes with a new American face: Kelly Clarkson.
DAMASCUS, Syria (Canadian Press) -- A smoking ban that few are expected to abide by went into effect in Syria Wednesday, a country where people light up even in hospitals.
HANOI (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- An international conference on efforts to fight pandemic influenza refused Wednesday to include in its final declaration a statement backed by the Polish government on pharmaceutical company conflicts of interest.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Food and Drug Administration says it will consider a new call Tuesday to force food makers to gradually cut the salt hidden inside their products -- but don't expect less salty soups, pizzas or pastas any time soon.
LONDON (AP) -- People playing computer games to train their brains might as well be playing Super Mario, new research suggests.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- School lunches have been called many things, but a group of retired military officers is giving them a new label: national security threat.
(Associated Press) -- Sodium levels can be high in packaged foods, and even higher in some restaurant meals. Government guidelines set 2,300 milligrams of sodium as the maximum daily intake, but the Institute of Medicine says people need just 1,500 mg a day, even less if they're over age 50. Many companies have introduced "low sodium" brands in response to increased concern about salt.
GENEVA (AP) -- The World Health Organization says the ash cloud over Europe poses no health risk beyond areas close to the volcano in Iceland.
NEW YORK (Canadian Press) -- Screening smokers for cancer with lung scans can lead to a high rate of false alarms, unneeded tests and biopsies, a new study suggests.
LONDON (AP) -- An influential British medical think tank is tackling the question of how far society should go to boost the number of organ and tissue donors, and is weighing a proposal to pay for body parts.
(Associated Press) -- Older women at higher risk for breast cancer now have two good drug options for preventing the disease, but they will have to weigh the trade-offs, a major study shows.
LONDON (AP) -- Health groups have spent more than a billion dollars and bought millions of bednets to fight malaria, and 20 African countries have increased their bednet coverage at least fivefold, new research says.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- He felt like he was suffocating, struggling to breathe despite the bullet hole in his chest.
(The New York Times News Service) -- Dr. Michael Wasylik hung his shingle in front of his Tampa orthopedic practice 30 years ago and patients streamed in.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- They call him the angry guy now. Even his friends. And at this moment, on a snowy evening when he should be home, putting his son to bed, Andrew Pogany is, in fact, ticked off.
GENEVA (AP) -- Europeans should try to stay indoors if ash from Iceland's volcano starts settling, the World Health Organization warned Friday as small amounts fell in Iceland, Scotland and Norway.
GOLDEN, Colo. (The New York Times News Service) -- Ricky Heilbron is racing a timer as he shoves metal pegs into a wooden board. The 9-year-old wears blue-tinted glasses and a buzzer on his left ear -- visual and audio stimulation for the right side of his brain.
LONDON (AP) -- A new autism disease identified in a flawed paper linking a common children's vaccine to autism, may not exist, new research says.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The fight over President Barack Obama's health care overhaul hasn't ended, it's simply shifted to a wider arena.
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Returning from Mexico, Michelle Obama made a brief stop Thursday in San Diego to visit a community garden farmed by international refugees that she called a model for building healthy communities across the nation and around the world.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Germs in the gut may help drive appetite, says new research into the link between obesity and bacteria.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attention is shifting to the world's five leading flu vaccine makers: How fast are they really producing swine flu vaccine, and just how do they plan to test that it works?
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