Health News

U.S. health officials say swine flu activity is dying down a bit, but the number of cases has surpassed 37,000 and deaths hit 211. Read More

One in three breast cancer patients identified in public screening programs may be treated unnecessarily, a new study says. Karsten Jorgensen and Peter Gotzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen analyzed breast cancer trends at least seven years before and after government-run screening programs for breast cancer started in parts of Australia, Britain, Canada, Norway and Sweden. Read More

Eat less, live longer? It seems to work for monkeys: A 20-year study found cutting calories by almost a third slowed their aging and fended off death. This is not about a quick diet to shed a few pounds. Scientists have long known they could increase the lifespan of mice and more primitive creatures _ worms, flies _ with deep, long-term cuts from normal consumption. Read More

Arthritis supplements bought by millions of pet owners for their dogs, cats and horses sometimes skimp on the ingredients the makers claim can help aching paws and aging joints, and some contain high amounts of lead, an independent laboratory found. Read More

A form of ebola virus has been detected in pigs for the first time, raising concerns it could mutate and threaten humans, scientists report. Read More

The World Health Organization has approved a second cervical cancer vaccine, this one made by GlaxoSmithKline, meaning U.N. agencies and partners can now officially buy millions of doses of the vaccine for poor countries worldwide. Read More

Roughly a fourth of American women getting early abortions last year did so with drugs rather than surgery, statistics show, as a new study reported improved safety in using the so-called "abortion pill." Read More

An experimental drug helped monkeys and rabbits survive anthrax in a series of studies, suggesting it could be useful in case of another anthrax attack. Read More

A transplant surgeon who completed an unprecedented eight-way kidney swap this week said Tuesday he believes such intricate, multistate exchanges can drastically reduce the number of patients waiting for eligible donors. Read More

A Food and Drug Administration panel has recommended limits on Tylenol and other drugs containing acetaminophen because of risks for liver failure. Maximum recommended doses for over-the-counter Tylenol would be reduced. Percocet and Vicodin, two narcotic prescription drugs containing acetaminophen, would be banned. Read More

Proposed limits on Tylenol, a painkiller as common as pain itself, have left many consumers fearful, confused and wondering where to turn for relief. The potential government crackdown on acetaminophen, Tylenol's main ingredient, would affect everyone from occasional pill poppers to chronic pain sufferers who rely on daily doses to make their lives more bearable. Read More

Baby Riley Matthews wheezed noisily on the exam table. "He's belly-breathing," the emergency-room doctor said worriedly _ Riley's little abdomen was markedly rising and falling with each breath, a sign of respiratory distress. Read More

Sleepless people sometimes use the Internet to get through the night. Now a small study shows promising results for insomniacs with nine weeks of Internet-based therapy. Read More

The United Nations may need more than $1 billion this year to help poor countries fight the global swine flu epidemic, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday. Read More

As President Barack Obama pushes to overhaul the American health care system, the role of government is at the heart of the debate. In Europe, free, state-run health care is a given. Read More

When carpenter Greg Douglas rolled his pickup truck, his toolbox hit him and smashed his ribs and collarbone. After a month in the hospital, the medical bills hit him even harder, totaling $165,000. Read More

A federal investigation has found that heart attack survivors enrolled in a study of a controversial alternative medicine treatment were not told enough about potential dangers from the drug being tested, including death. Read More

With swine flu continuing to spread around the world, researchers say they have found the reason it is _ so far _ more a series of local blazes than a wide-raging wildfire. The new virus, H1N1, has a protein on its surface that is not very efficient at binding with receptors in people's respiratory tracts, researchers at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology report in Friday's edition of the journal Science. Read More

Attorney General Eric Holder had emergency oral surgery Thursday to remove a cracked tooth. Read More

In a perverse twist of medical fate, Farrah Fawcett has become the poster girl for anal cancer, a rare disease often linked to a sexually transmitted virus. Read More