MEDICINE

Weight-loss surgery did a better job of controlling type 2 diabetes in overweight and moderately obese patients than the most advanced medical treatment for the disease, researchers said on Monday.

Drug-resistant tuberculosis is becoming a widespread problem, according to a WHO researcher.

Cancer often evades the human immune system by fooling white blood cells into not destroying it. Researchers may have found a way to overcome this defense by masking a protein flag that tumors wave as a don't eat me signal.

Technology is quickly advancing and many of the new, innovative tech toys released in recent years were things we thought would not have been possible earlier. Yet technology has proved there are no boundaries. Something new is on the horizon today, something that could change the lives of paraplegics forever if done right.

At 71, former Vice President Dick Cheney was older than average for a heart transplant and had to wait longer than the typical patient as well -- 20 months compared with a year or less.

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was recovering on Saturday after undergoing heart-transplant surgery, a once-risky procedure whose survival rates have improved over the years.

A swine flu outbreak in India has claimed 12 lives since the beginning of this month and more than a hundred people have been infected so far. The source of the outbreak has not yet been determined, but India's Health Ministry has said it is being contained and urged people not to panic.

A federal court judge has ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to take action on its own 35-year-old finding that would prevent the livestock industry from pumping healthy animals with low-level antibiotics. Exposure to those antibiotics are associated with the development of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

The development of a novel antidepressant ground to a halt this week when researchers found it did not make patients feel any better than the pills they were already taking.

Whitney Houston's official cause of death was announced on Thursday, more than a month after the 48-year-old singer was found dead. The L.A. County coroner stated that Houston died of accidental drowning, with contributing factors of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine in her system. The toxicology report revealed that Houston had not overcome her battle with drugs.

The U.S. Army has started a system-wide review to ensure its mental healthcare facilities are not engaging in the unacceptable practice of considering treatment costs in making a diagnosis, Army Secretary John McHugh told a U.S. Senate hearing on Wednesday.

A coalition of advocacy groups is asking the United Nations to intervene to help stop California's widespread use of solitary confinement, saying the routine isolation of inmates is akin to torture.

Brazil will introduce tightened controls on sales of breast implants including lot-by-lot testing, the government said on Thursday, after thousands of defective French implants were sold in the country and across Latin America.

Tuberculosis reached its lowest levels in the United States since 1953, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday.

Lawmakers are investigating three pharmacies in Maryland and North Carolina accused of passing critical drugs in short supply directly to wholesalers, who are likely to profit from the scarcity of life-saving medicines, rather than to the patients that need them.

Medicines are meant for saving lives, but sometimes a casual handling proves them to be fatal.

Scientists have discovered how electroconvulsive or electric shock therapy - a controversial but effective treatment - acts on the brains of severely depressed people and say the finding could help improve diagnosis and treatment of mental illness.

Americans travelling to the Olympics could be exposed to measles and should be vaccinated before they go, the CDC warned.

Electroshock is one of the most effective - and controversial - treatments for depression, but until recently, scientists have been at a loss to explain just how it works. A new study suggests that ECT may reduce depression symptoms by putting a lid on overactive communications between areas in the brain involved in thinking and areas associated with mood control.

Poison and child are not two words that anybody would like to see going together. The very word poison itself is enough to make parents worried.

On New Year's Eve 2004, after months of losing weight and suffering fevers, night sweats and shortness of breath, student Anna Watterson was taken into hospital coughing up blood.