Health News

The number of people worldwide infected with the virus that causes AIDS _ about 33 million _ has remained virtually unchanged for the last two years, United Nations experts said Tuesday. Read More

A technology originally developed for premature babies may be helping to save some of the sickest swine flu patients by rerouting their blood so their lungs can rest. Read More

Schoolteacher Kinzi Blair makes only $46,000 a year, but she has what many would consider a "Cadillac" health plan, now targeted for a big tax increase by health reformers. Read More

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. Read More

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. Read More

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. Read More

Lawmakers broke along party lines on a new aspect of the health care debate Sunday as a former National Institutes of Health chief urged women to ignore guidelines that delay the start of breast cancer screenings. Read More

The former director of the National Institutes of Health is advising women to ignore new guidelines that delay the start of routine mammogram testing for breast cancer. Read More

Four North Carolina patients at a single hospital tested positive for a type of swine flu that is resistant to Tamiflu, health officials said Friday. Read More

The White House is on a collision course with Catholic bishops in an intractable dispute over abortion that could blow up the fragile political coalition behind President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Read More

Several doctors groups and advocacy groups set guidelines for cancer screening, and they update that advice periodically as new information emerges. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they don't. Last year, a number of groups got together and issued consensus guidelines for colon cancer. Read More

Two days before shipping off to war, Marine Pfc. Jesse Sheets sat inside a trailer in the Mojave Desert, his gaze fixed on a computer that flashed a rhythmic pulse of contrasting images. Read More

Health officials say four people in North Carolina have tested positive for a type of swine flu that's resistant to the drug Tamiflu. Read More

In a Nov. 17 story about drug interactions between heartburn medications and the blood thinner Plavix, The Associated Press misidentified Johnson & Johnson's Mylanta as part of the H-2 blocker drug family. Mylanta is an antacid. Read More

Babies squirmed and wailed as needles plunged into their chubby thighs at a public health clinic on the outskirts of Hanoi on Friday. Like little ones everywhere, the reaction to the sting was never pretty. Read More

When the nation's swine flu vaccination program began in early October, health officials predicted it was going to be "messy." They were right. Read More

China's health ministry said it will punish officials who underreport cases of swine flu after a doctor famous for exposing the extent of the 2003 SARS epidemic said he believes the true number of swine flu deaths is being covered up. Read More

The first county-by-county survey of obesity reflects past studies that show the rate of obesity is highest in the Southeast and Appalachia. High rates of obesity and diabetes were reported in more than 80 percent of counties in the Appalachian region that includes Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, according to the new research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read More

Federal health experts on Thursday brushed off lingering safety questions about a popular inhaler drug and suggested it carry bolder benefit claims. Read More

Health experts say extraordinary measures against swine flu _ most notably quarantines imposed by China, where entire planeloads of passengers were isolated if one traveler had symptoms _ have failed to contain the disease. Read More