| (The New York Times News Service) -- The swine flu is receding in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationwide, and the worst of the pandemic may be over, but public health experts say it's too early for people to let their guard down.
(USA TODAY) -- A large new study is the latest to find no link between rising cellphone use and rates of brain cancer.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hospitals are giving faster care to lots more heart attack patients, a speed-up sure to be saving lives.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientists can start using taxpayer dollars to do research with 13 batches of embryonic stem cells and the government says dozens more cell lines should be available soon, opening a new era for the potentially life-saving field.
ATLANTA (The New York Times News Service) -- So many messages have emerged about swine flu -- it's bad, it's not that bad, it's like the common flu, it's not like the common flu -- that many people are confused about when to seek care or head to an emergency room, doctors say.
ROME (AP) -- A group of European scientists say they have successfully connected a robotic hand to a man who had lost an arm, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial hand and control it with his thoughts.
(The New York Times News Service) -- As the Senate plunged Monday into a colossal debate on health care reform, a key question is blaring louder than ever: Will the proposals do anything to control health care costs.
(Associated Press) -- Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline says one of its swine flu vaccines has been certified by the World Health Organization, making it available for donors to buy for developing countries.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Swine flu infections seem to be dropping, but the number of children who died with the illness rose by about 30, according to a government report released Monday.
CHICAGO (AP) -- The first rigorous study of behavior treatment in autistic children as young as 18 months found two years of therapy can vastly improve symptoms, often resulting in a milder diagnosis.
(McClatchy-Tribune Information Services) -- The only concern Sheryl Granger had when traveling with her 6-year-old son this week was the airplane.
BRUSSELS (AP) -- With a caretaker holding his hand, a Belgian man who was diagnosed as comatose for 23 years typed out a message Tuesday that he felt reborn after decades of loneliness and frustration.
LONDON (AP) -- Canadian doctors have been advised not to use a batch of 170,000 doses of swine flu vaccine while authorities investigate reports of allergic reactions among recipients, drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC said Tuesday.
SEATTLE (AP) -- Parents who thought their preschoolers were spending time in home-based day cares, taking naps, eating healthy snacks and learning to play nicely with others may be surprised to discover they are sitting as many as two hours a day in front of a TV, according to a study published Monday.
BRUSSELS (AP) -- A man who emerged from what doctors thought was a vegetative state says he was fully conscious for 23 years but could not respond because he was paralyzed, his mother said Monday.
(The New York Times News Service) -- ATLANTA -- Esther Notrica dreads this time of year when she must review dozens of Medicare prescription drug plans to figure out which one works best for her.
WASHINGTON (AP)-- First mammograms. Now -- in an apparent coincidence -- Pap smears.
ATLANTA (AP) - Health officials say four people in North Carolina have tested positive for a type of swine flu that's resistant to the drug Tamiflu.
ATLANTA (AP) -- The first county-by-county survey of obesity reflects past studies that show the rate of obesity is highest in the Southeast and Appalachia.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- A CT scan -- a kind of super X-ray -- provides a faster, cheaper way to diagnose a heart attack when someone goes to the emergency room with chest pains, a new study suggests.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal policy on who should get breast cancer screening has not changed, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Most women don't need a mammogram in their 40s and should get one every two years starting at 50, a government task force said Monday. It's a major reversal that conflicts with the American Cancer Society's long-standing position.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Uninsured patients with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance, according to a troubling new study.
ATLANTA (AP) - Sexually spread diseases continue to rise, with reported chlamydia cases setting yet another record in 2008, government health officials said Monday.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Estimates of deaths caused by the swine flu have grown to nearly 4,000 since April, roughly quadrupling previous estimates. But that doesn't mean swine flu suddenly has worsened.
(Associated Press) -- If you're among the hundreds of thousands of Americans with clogged kidney arteries, you might want to consider trying medicines before rushing into angioplasty to open them up. The pricey procedure is no more effective and carries surprisingly big risks, a study found.
(Associated Press) -- Analysis of a dozen published studies testing possible new uses for a Pfizer Inc. epilepsy drug found that reporting of the results was often misleading, indicating the medicine worked better than internal company documents showed.
(The New York Times News Service) -- The idea of mandatory paid sick leave has been kicking around Congress for years. But as more people get sick with H1N1 flu virus, it could become a reality.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Cigarette smoking rose slightly for the first time in almost 15 years, dashing health officials' hopes that the U.S. smoking rate had moved permanently below 20 percent.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Male factory workers in China who got very high doses of a chemical that's been widely used in hard plastic bottles had high rates of sexual problems, researchers reported Wednesday.
(USA TODAY) -- Nearly half of breast cancer survivors suffer from persistent pain, even two to three years after surgery, a study shows.
HOUSTON (AP) -- The American Medical Association on Monday rebuffed dissident members and voted to stick with support for ongoing health reform efforts, while reiterating wariness over proposals that threaten doctors' pocketbooks and independence.
CHICAGO (AP) -- The American Medical Association on Tuesday voted to oppose the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy, and declared that gay marriage bans contribute to health disparities.
GENEVA (AP) -- In its first study of women's health around the globe, the World Health Organization said Monday that the AIDS virus is the leading cause of death and disease among women between the ages of 15 and 44.
(McClatchy-Tribune Information Services) -- The Food and Drug Administration is investigating companies nationwide that are advertising and selling unauthorized H1N1 products.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- French scientists mixed gene therapy and bone marrow transplants in two boys to seemingly halt a brain disease that can kill by adolescence.
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (The New York Times News Service) -- Colorado State University researchers think insulin levels in the brain may be the key to understanding how some types of dementia progress.
NEW YORK (AP) -- It seemed like a great idea -- doing bypass surgery while the heart is still beating, sparing patients the complications that can come from going on a heart-lung machine. Now the first big test of this method has produced a surprise: Bypass has fewer problems and is more successful done the old way.
WASHINGTON (The New York Times News Service) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday that his chamber would "not be bound by any timelines," potentially pushing President Obama's top domestic priority into next year.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Premature births, often due to poor care of low-income pregnant women, are the main reason the U.S. infant mortality rate is higher than in most European countries, a government report said Tuesday.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Researchers studying antibiotics in pregnancy have found a surprising link between common drugs used to treat urinary infections and birth defects. Reassuringly, the most-used antibiotics in early pregnancy - penicillins - appear to be the safest.
(USA Today) -- John Stevenson hasn't stopped patronizing the local gym, but after his workout, he is wiping down his machines with spray disinfectant and paper towels. Sales associate Janet Lininger is having customers swipe their own credit cards (she's relieved to have recently shifted from the intimate-apparel section to the far-less-cozy handbag department).
CHICAGO (AP) -- Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say.
ALBANY, N.Y. (The New York Times News Service)-- The science of addiction is as stark as multicolored scans of the brains of chronic alcoholics.
(Associated Press)-- EDITOR'S NOTE: Ten years and $2.5 billion in research have found no cures from alternative medicine. Yet these mostly unproven treatments are now mainstream and used by more than a third of all Americans. This is one in an occasional Associated Press series on their use and potential risks.
LONDON (AP) -- To fight pneumonia, the world's top killer of children, United Nations officials say they need $39 billion (euro26.35 billion) over the next six years.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A single dose of the swine flu vaccine works well for almost all pregnant women, but young children will still need two doses for best results, federal health officials said Monday.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Independent health advisers begin monitoring safety of the swine flu vaccine on Monday, an extra step the government promised in this year's unprecedented program to watch for possible side effects.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Heath officials say swine flu has caused at least 19 more children's deaths -- the largest one-week increase since the pandemic started in April.
(McClatchy-Tribune Information Services) -- Newborns whose mothers got seasonal flu shots during pregnancy were less likely to be born premature, underweight, and in need of hospital care for respiratory illnesses, three new studies found.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- It was bound to happen: Some people who aren't at high risk for swine flu complications got the much-in-demand vaccine.
WASHINGTON (Canadian Press) -- President Barack Obama said Friday that a U.S. travel ban against people infected with the HIV virus will be overturned early next year.
CHICAGO (AP) -- The number of students staying home sick with the flu is multiplying nationwide and normally quiet school nurses' offices suddenly look like big city emergency rooms, packed with students too ill to finish the day.
DENVER (The New York Times News Service) -- It seemed to Margie McCandless that she was destined to have diabetes.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- With more than 23 million doses of swine flu vaccine now available, health officials are visiting vaccine plants to check for any more pending interruptions to what appears to be a slowly but steadily growing supply.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Children on widely used psychiatric drugs can quickly gain an alarming amount of weight; many pack on nearly 20 pounds and become obese within just 11 weeks, a study found.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In an Oct. 21 story about drug labels, The Associated Press erroneously described the Novartis drug Zometa. Zometa was approved in 2001 to treat excessive calcium levels, not to treat a form of osteoporosis in cancer patients. Also, the drug was approved only in a 4 milligram dose, not in both 4 milligram and 8 milligram doses. A corrected version of the story appears below.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Food and Drug Administration has allowed drugs for cancer and other diseases to stay on the market even when follow-up studies showed they didn't extend patients' lives, say congressional investigators.
CHICAGO (AP) -- At least one in five U.S. children aged 1 to 11 don't get enough vitamin D and could be at risk for a variety of health problems including weak bones, the most recent national analysis suggests.
ATLANTA (AP) -- About 1 in 5 U.S. children had a flu-like illness earlier this month -- and most of those cases likely were swine flu, according to a new government health survey. About 7 percent of surveyed adults said they'd had a flu-like illness, the survey found.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Federal health officials say swine flu is more widespread now than it's ever been.
SWIFTWATER, Pa. (AP) -- The federal government originally promised 120 million doses of swine flu vaccine by now. Only 13 million have come through.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Did you know that Lunesta will help you fall asleep just 15 minutes faster? Or that a higher dose of the osteoporosis drug Zometa could damage a cancer patient's kidneys and raise their risk of death?
(The New York Times News Service) -- Thousands of American kids are getting sick from the swine flu epidemic, which has hit months before the traditional flu season.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Safety investigators have sent government agencies a wake-up call about sleep apnea, a disorder that's showing up in a wide range of transportation accidents.
(USA TODAY) -- As health care workers around the country work frantically to accommodate the millions seeking protection against the H1N1 strain of influenza, they have to contend with a countertrend: significant numbers of Americans who don't plan to vaccinate themselves or their children.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Most hospitalized heart failure patients are sent home without widely recommended inexpensive pills, despite a program to get more doctors to follow treatment guidelines, a study suggests.
ATLANTA (AP) -- A second kind of vaccine against cervical cancer may be added to the recommended list for girls and young women after a federal advisory panel voted Wednesday to support it.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Visiting a loved one in the hospital? Better check on new flu limits first. Hospitals around the country are turning away visiting children and tightening restrictions on adults, too, in hopes of limiting spread of swine flu in the hallways - although there's little science the limits work.
(Associated Press) -- Fresh results from the world's first successful test of an experimental AIDS vaccine confirm that it is only marginally effective and suggest that its protection against HIV infection may wane over time.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A major report confirms what health officials long have believed: Bans on smoking in restaurants, bars and other gathering spots reduce the risk of heart attacks among nonsmokers.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A surprising number of frail, elderly Americans in nursing homes are suffering from futile care at the end of their lives, two new federally funded studies reveal.
CHICAGO (AP) -- A new study suggests less-invasive keyhole surgery for prostate cancer may mean a higher risk for lasting incontinence and impotence when compared with traditional surgery.
ATLANTA (AP) -- The largest U.S. analysis of hospitalized adult swine flu patients has found almost half were healthy people who did not have asthma or any other chronic illnesses before they got sick.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Max Gomez was a bright-eyed 5-year-old happy to have just started kindergarten when he developed sniffles and a fever. His mother figured it was only a cold. Three days later, the Antioch, Tenn., boy was dead, apparently from swine flu. At least 76 American children have died from the new virus, and doctors are urging parents to watch for warning signs that the flu has become life-threatening.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Health officials said Friday that 76 children have died of swine flu, including 16 new reports in the past week -- more evidence the new virus is unusually dangerous in kids.
(Associated Press) -- One quarter of Americans sick enough to be hospitalized with swine flu last spring wound up needing intensive care and 7 percent of them died, the first such study of the early months of the global epidemic suggests. That's a little higher than with ordinary seasonal flu, several experts said.
WASHINGTON (AP)-- The people who most want the swine flu vaccine are older people, who will be last in line, says a new Associated Press-GfK poll.
ATLANTA (AP) -- As the first wave of swine flu vaccine crosses the country, more than a third of parents don't want their kids vaccinated, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll.
(McClatchy-Tribune Information Services) -- Unemployed people are four times more likely to experience severe mental-health issues, including depression, than people with jobs, according to a survey released yesterday by the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health America.
ATLANTA (AP) -- The initial swine flu vaccine doses this week will be the nasal spray version, and arm injections will begin next week to help meet demand, health officials said Tuesday.
(McClatchy-Tribune Information Services) -- Up to 95 percent of Americans have not caught the swine flu and could benefit from a vaccine, federal health officials said Tuesday.
GENEVA (AP) -- Vaccine is the best tool against swine flu despite reports of a few minor side effects from the initial campaign in China, the World Health Organization said Monday.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Three years ago, the maker of a surgical clip called the Hem-o-lok issued an urgent recall notice warning doctors to stop using the fasteners on living kidney donors. It said the clips could dislodge in their bodies, with "serious, even life-threatening consequences."
WASHINGTON (AP) -- They call it kangaroo care: A premature baby nestles skin-to-skin against mom's bare, warm chest. In Malawi, mothers' bodies take the place of too-pricey incubators to keep these fragile newborns alive.
(The New York Times News Service) -- Ed Homan, an orthopedic surgeon in Tampa, often sees patients complaining of knee pain. Based on a $40 X-ray and his 40 years of experience, he can usually tell if it is only a sprain.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Two new government studies indicate about 1 in 100 children have autism disorders -- higher than a previous U.S. estimate of 1 in 150.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- And we're off: Swine flu vaccinations begin this week, after months of preparations and promises. But don't start bugging your doctor about an appointment just yet.
LONDON (AP)-- Most babies born in rich countries this century will eventually make it to their 100th birthday, new research says. Danish experts say that since the 20th century, people in developed countries are living about three decades longer than in the past. Surprisingly, the trend shows little sign of slowing down.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The long-awaited first vaccinations against swine flu -- the squirt-in-the-nose kind -- begin early next week in parts of the country, and states are urging people to be patient until more arrives.
(McClatchy-Tribune Information Services) -- Swine flu arrived at the Berger home a few weeks ago.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Drug-related deaths outnumber those from motor vehicle accidents in a growing number of states, according to new government data that highlight a shift in the top cause of deaths after disease and illness.
LONDON (AP) -- Being fat in middle age may slash women's chances of making it to their golden years in good health by almost 80 percent, a new study says. American researchers observed more than 17,000 female nurses with an average age of 50 in the U.S. All of the women were healthy when the study began in 1976. Researchers then monitored the women's weight, along with other health changes, every two years until 2000.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Less than 10 percent of U.S. high school students are eating the combined recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables, a finding that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called "poor" in a report Tuesday.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Parents beware: Giving in to teens' demands for their own cars can have dangerous consequences, new research suggests.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Some doctors tell patients they have "stage zero" breast cancer. Others call it a precancer.
(The New York Times News Service) -- As Bay Area scientists celebrated the first promising results from the largest-ever AIDS vaccine trial, they cautioned that much more research is needed before a vaccine could be available to the public.
BANGKOK (AP) -- For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Adults with a common form of leukemia had a better chance of remission if they got a double dose of a long-used cancer drug, two new studies found.
(Associated Press) -- Who needs vaccine against regular winter flu, and who should be first in line for the swine flu shot? There's lots of overlap.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Studies of the new swine flu vaccine show children 10 and older will need just one shot for protection -- but younger kids almost certainly will need two.
LONDON (AP) -- People with a genetic susceptibility to colon cancer could cut their chances of developing the disease in half by taking a daily dose of aspirin, researchers said Monday.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Democrats see plenty of room for improvement in a sweeping health care overhaul bill, starting with changes to a tax on high-cost insurance policies that could hit middle-class Americans hard.
ATLANTA (AP) -- The first doses of swine flu vaccine may all be the nasal spray version, government health officials said Friday.
LONDON (AP)-- Giving contraceptives to people in developing countries could help fight climate change by slowing population growth, experts said Friday.
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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