MEDICINE

Called the Hotshot, the condom has been produced after government research showed 12 to14-year-olds did not use sufficient protection when having sex.

WEST Australians would automatically go on the Australian Organ Donor Register unless they opted out, under new donor laws set to be debated in State Parliament later this year.

The project, which is unrivalled in scale, went underway in 2008 and is working to catalogue the genetic profiles of cancer cells collected from 25,000 people - 500 per targeted cancers.

Patients suffering from rare tumours can now be linked up with clinical trials and research following the launch of a new web site in Melbourne.

Dr Yian Gu and colleagues at Columbia University Medical Centre in the US over the four years study shown that out of 2,148 retirement-age adults living in New york, 253 of these older adults developed Alzheimer's disease.

An obesity expert from the UK believes Australia has overtaken America as having one of the unhealthiest diets in the world.

New statistics show one in five people in Guam have diabetes and up to 50 per cent of Pacific islanders have the disease.

(Reuters) - Widely used anticonvulsant drugs, including Pfizer's Neurontin and Novartis' Trileptal, may increase the risk of suicide, attempted suicide and violent death in patients taking them for the first time, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who cut out saturated fatty acids while upping their intake of white bread, pasta and other refined carbohydrates that can cause blood sugar to spike aren't doing their heart any favors, new research from Denmark shows.

We all know that too much salt may increase the risk of high blood pressure, hypertension, stroke, heart failure and the list goes on. We maybe eating a healthy balanced diet right now, but chances are these foods may contain too much salt. So, what is the best way to take salt?

Testicular cancer occurs when the cells in the testicles grow abnormally and develop into a tumour, commonly a seminoma in men aged 25 to 55 and a nonseminoma in men aged 15 to 30. Usually only one testis is affected, but it may spread through the lymph nodes to the abdomen, lungs, liver, bone or brain.

The Ministry of Ageing has recently released a report that the Rudd Government will invest $386 million to increase the number of services in aged care to better support older Australians.

Children who spend time outdoors are less likely to become short-sighted and require glasses, say Australian researchers.

(Reuters) - A diet rich in olive oil, nuts, fish, poultry and certain fruits and vegetables may have a powerful effect at staving off Alzheimer's disease, researchers reported on Monday.

According to the long-standing policy that restricts blood donation from the gay community, a man who has had homosexual sex within the past 12 months is not eligible to donate blood. The policy is now being reviewed by Red Cross Blood service of Australia.

The first Australia's HIV antibody testing was introduced mid-April of 1985 and nearly 900,000 of the tests are still conducted, yearly across the country.

Recent study shows that although shock, anxiety and depression are experienced by carers, there are also beneficial consequences from their labour of love.

(Reuters) - Deaths of women in and around childbirth have gone down by an average of 35 percent globally, according to a study using new methods, but are surprisingly high in the United States, Canada and Norway.

(Reuters) - The World Health Organization conceded shortcomings on Monday in its handling of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, including a failure to communicate uncertainties about the new virus as it swept around the globe.

The livestock industry and the federal government are allocating $5 million for the research on foot and mouth disease overseas, rather than importing the live virus.

Scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have found that breast stem cells are extremely sensitive to the female hormones oestrogen and progesterone, a finding that opens the way for the development of new preventions and treatments for breast cancer.