WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More emphasis is needed on family planning issues in poor countries, the World Bank said on Thursday, citing new data that it said showed 51 million unplanned pregnancies occur because women lack access to contraceptives.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Water systems serving about 30 percent of Americans are not giving them fluoridated water, six decades after fluoridation was started as a public health measure to prevent tooth decay, officials said on Thursday.
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TOKYO (Reuters) - Physically active people are less likely than sedentary types to develop cancer, a research group led by the Japanese health ministry announced on Thursday.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study offers more evidence that the rapid heartbeat seen in many hard-training athletes is typically a benign side effect of physical conditioning.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Based on new research, smokers may want to check the beta-carotene content of any multivitamin supplements they are taking, especially if these supplements are promoted as being beneficial for eye health.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers studying more than 100 families prone to autism said they had identified at least six new genes that appear to underlie the disorder — and said they suggest it may be possible to treat it sometimes.
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - When children see others in pain, their brains respond as if it were happening to them, U.S. researchers said on Friday.
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BELTSVILLE, Maryland (Reuters) - Anti-seizure drugs for treating epilepsy carry an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior, but not enough to warrant a black box warning, a U.S. advisory panel concluded on Thursday.
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - The American Medical Association, the largest physicians’ group in the United States, apologized to black doctors on Thursday for a history of racial discrimination.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study with twins suggests that for men, the obsession with being too small and undeveloped, known as muscle dysmorphic disorder, may share the same genetic underpinnings as anorexia nervosa.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The newest low-tech fertility treatment may be a diet, researchers said on Wednesday after learning that obese men have more abnormal sperm and make less semen.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Last month’s Supreme Court ruling striking down a strict gun control law in the U.S. capital will lead to more deaths and accidental injuries, the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine said on Wednesday.
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HONG KONG (Reuters) - Scientists have identified around 100 genes that the H5N1 bird flu virus needs in a host in order to replicate, and this finding may help in the hunt for ways to block its proliferation.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The biggest U.S. outbreak of measles since 1997 has sickened 127 people in 15 states, most of whom were not vaccinated against the highly contagious viral illness, federal health officials said on Wednesday.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Despite new efforts to regulate Internet pharmacies, 85 percent of sites selling controlled drugs do not require a prescription, researchers reported on Wednesday.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 1,000 people have been sickened in an outbreak of Salmonella food poisoning and federal officials said on Wednesday they now suspected several causes, including jalapeno peppers.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Parents’ general approach to raising their children is often apparent in how they manage their kids’ diets — suggesting that efforts to control childhood obesity need to consider family dynamics, according to researchers.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former Wall Street banker who said he lost $3 million from compulsive gambling caused by a popular drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease is suing companies involved with the drug for his losses.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Declines in death rates from the four leading types of cancer in the United States since the early 1990s have been driven largely by progress among college-educated men and women, researchers said on Tuesday.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Certain antibiotic drugs such as Bayer AG’s Cipro need stronger “black box” warnings about the risk of tendonitis and ruptured tendons, U.S. health regulators said on Tuesday.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A coalition of unions, think tanks and other groups launched an advertising campaign on Tuesday saying they want to ensure that health-care reform tops the U.S. political agenda after the November elections.
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BARCELONA (Reuters) - The same infrared technology that measures fat content in milk can more accurately predict which embryos have the best chance of resulting in a pregnancy, fertility experts said on Tuesday.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Regular daily exercise benefits elderly women with dementia and these benefits appear to accrue over time, researchers from the Republic of Korea report.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation that cut fees doctors receive for giving chemotherapy to Medicare patients has not affected care so far, researchers reported on Tuesday.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Delaying the introduction of cow’s milk may increase, rather than decrease, the risk that a child will develop allergies in the first 2 years of life, researchers from the Netherlands report.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Gels aimed at helping women protect themselves from the AIDS virus may end up helping men as much or more, researchers predicted on Monday.
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BARCELONA (Reuters) - There is insufficient evidence to say whether acupuncture helps women conceive when undergoing fertility treatments, British researchers told a conference on Tuesday.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A protein made in the liver may give doctors a way to predict years in advance who is at high risk for the most common form of diabetes, a U.S. study published on Tuesday said.
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OTTAWA (Reuters) - Everyone knows what too much television can do to the mind and what too little exercise can do to the body, but a Canadian study has now shown that the boob tube can also lead to an increase in how much we eat.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Keeping a food diary — a detailed account of what you eat and drink and the calories it packs — is a powerful tool in helping people lose weight, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Yes, men can and do get breast cancer — and the disease is often treated at a late stage, according to research presented Sunday in Lugano, Switzerland.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials will seek a strong “black box” warning for epilepsy drugs cautioning about the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior, an agency spokeswoman told Reuters on Monday.
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - A nutritious diet in early childhood provides a developmental edge that may not be apparent until adulthood, according to a long-term study of Guatemalan villagers released on Monday.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The corticosteroid drug budesonide, given as a nasal spray for 6 weeks, benefits children with mild sleep apnea, a study shows.
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BARCELONA (Reuters) - A new technique may help newly diagnosed cancer patients preserve their eggs, and perhaps their fertility, before chemotherapy, German researchers said on Monday.
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BARCELONA (Reuters) - A U.S. researcher’s argument that twins should be the goal of in vitro fertilization drew opposition from many researchers on Monday who warned of the risks of multiple pregnancies.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Dosing expectant mothers and their new babies with a probiotic mix of “good bacteria” may help the infants fight off respiratory infections, new research suggests.
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BOSTON (Reuters) - An experimental process that snags lung cancer cells from a blood sample could give doctors real-time feedback on the most effective therapy, researchers reported on Wednesday.
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Prevention efforts such as losing weight, kicking the smoking habit, lowering cholesterol and taking an aspirin a day could cut heart attacks in the United States by 36 percent and strokes by 20 percent in the next three decades, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Young adults who were born very small tend to strike out on their own later in life than their full-term peers, Finnish researchers report.
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BARCELONA (Reuters) - Couples trying to have a baby when the man is over 40 will have more difficulty conceiving than if he is younger, French researchers said on Sunday.
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NEW DELHI (Reuters) - It pays to use a toilet in southern India, as residents are earning close to a dollar a month by using public urinals, a scheme launched by authorities to promote hygiene and research in rural areas.
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Janet Guttsman is bureau chief for Reuters in Canada, and has worked for the company in Germany, Russia and the United States. When she’s not running the Canadian news file, she enjoys long bicycling trips in Canada and beyond. In the following story, she writes of the support she received online after a diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer.
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GENEVA (Reuters) - Food safety experts agreed for the first time on the qualities defining a tomato, in a first step toward an international code on preventing fruit and vegetable contamination.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study shows that having diabetes independently raises the risk of illness and death in people with heart failure, which occurs when the heart loses its ability to pump blood efficiently.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Breast reconstruction after cancer surgery can have lasting benefits for women’s psychological well-being and body image, a new study suggests.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A novel nonrobotic device called the Sensorimotor Active Rehabilitation Training (SMART) Arm can help stroke survivors with partial arm paralysis re-learn the task of reaching, a study shows.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV-16), which has been linked to cervical cancer, can be detected in human breast milk collected during the early period after a woman delivers her baby, doctors from Finland report.
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LONDON (Reuters) - An imbalance of a key brain chemical could cause crib death, researchers said on Thursday in what they called a chance discovery.
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Key-hole surgery to treat endometriosis is associated with good short-term outcomes but has a high reoperation rate in the long run, research suggests. Hysterectomy, on the other hand, while “too radical,” is associated with a low reoperation rate, the study team found, and preservation of the ovaries is a “viable option.”
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who take part in clinical trials often do so out of a desire to advance scientific knowledge and to help others, a new international study demonstrates.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The investigation of a salmonella outbreak in the United States is shifting to the southern border to encompass produce imported from Mexico, CNN reported on Thursday.
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