Health News

LONDON (Reuters) - Rising levels of obesity in Britain could lead to as many as 12,000 new cases of weight-related cancer each year by the end of the decade, a leading charity warned on Tuesday.

TOKYO (AFP) - Two middle-aged Japanese bureaucrats showed their bulging bellies to the nation as they kicked off a diet blog as part of a national campaign to fight growing obesity.

LONDON (Reuters) - Obese women can improve their health without dieting by changing their eating habits and exercising more, researchers said on Monday.

LONDON (AFP) - Dance classes are to be provided on Britain's public health service to counter declining fitness levels and prevent a national obesity epidemic, a newspaper said.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Africa, a continent usually synonymous with hunger, is falling prey to obesity. It's a trend driven by new lifestyles and old beliefs that big is beautiful. Ask Nodo Njobo, a plump hairdressing assistant. She is coy about her weight, but like many African women, proud of her "big bum." She says she'd like to be slimmer, but worries how her friends would react.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Children should be exposed to fewer television ads for anti-impotence drugs and more for birth control, and need to be shielded from an advertising onslaught in general, the leading U.S. pediatricians' group said on Monday.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Hundreds of Indians demonstrated on Friday to demand new HIV drugs, while health workers in Muslim-majority Indonesia marked World AIDS Day by handing out condoms to prostitutes for safe sex.

DONA PAULA, India (AFP) - Indian scientists are hoping to discover once and for all if seahorses are an aphrodisiac, a myth that has made the creatures a major hunting target for centuries and an endangered species.

NELSPRUIT, South Africa (AFP) - South Africa has unveiled plans to halve the number of people being infected with the AIDS virus within five years by persuading youngsters to delay the start of their sex lives.

BEIJING (Reuters) - On the eve of World AIDS Day, construction workers at the building site of Beijing's CCTV tower put down tools and picked up condoms and brochures touting safe sex and HIV/AIDS prevention.

WASHINGTON - Patients implanted with drug-coated stents to hold open their choked arteries face a small but significant risk of blood clots, health officials said Tuesday, and a new study recommended they take clot-busting medications indefinitely.

TUESDAY, Dec. 5 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. Medicaid patients are less likely than patients with HMOs or private health insurance to receive recommended cardiac care, say researchers who analyzed data on more than 96,000 patients at 521 hospitals across the country.

(HealthDay News) -- Here are the latest clinical trials, courtesy of Thomson CenterWatch:

A newer drug appeared to delay the progression of the most common form of diabetes a little longer than two older medications but with greater weight gain and more fractures, a large study has found.

MONDAY, Dec. 4 (HealthDay News) -- One of a new class of diabetes drugs delayed the progression of type 2 diabetes along with the need to add additional medications.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Arkansas and Louisiana have it, and now California is considering a ban on smoking inside cars when children are present.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who are underweight before they become pregnant are at heightened risk for suffering a miscarriage in the first trimester, a UK study shows, but taking vitamin supplements and eating fresh fruit and vegetables can reduce the risk.

TUESDAY, Dec. 5 (HealthDay News) -- It's no secret that American kids eat too much. Now, a new study provides some specific numbers that could help fight the obesity epidemic.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A unit of SunOpta Inc. said it was recalling frozen strawberries used in U.S. smoothie drinks because they may have been contaminated with an organism that can sometimes trigger fatal infections in young children.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe now has the world's highest percentage of children orphaned by AIDS, with almost one in every four children having lost at least one parent to the disease, the United Nations Children's Fund said on Tuesday.

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Diabetes is striking growing numbers of children around the world as parents and doctors fail to diagnose a disease which until recently was associated mostly with middle-aged and elderly people, experts said on Tuesday.

In a rare federal prosecution, a leading government Alzheimer's researcher was charged Monday with a criminal conflict of interest for performing lucrative private drug company work that overlapped his official duties.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - When it comes to finding the best deal on prescriptions under the Medicare health insurance program, 68-year-old Carol Paremske of Miami says she knows all the tricks.

SATURDAY, Dec. 2 (HealthDay News) -- A national campaign has been launched to reach about 3.25 million modest-income older Americans who are eligible for Medicare Extra Help with prescription drugs but have not yet signed up for the program.

FRIDAY, Dec. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Efforts to include more private insurers in Medicare may be costing the agency more money, new research shows.

TUESDAY, Dec. 5 (HealthDay News) -- The popular hair-loss drug Propecia can change the results of a common screen for prostate cancer, the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, leading to skewed readings that might obscure the presence of disease, a new study found.

LONDON (Reuters) - Rising levels of obesity in Britain could lead to as many as 12,000 new cases of weight-related cancer each year by the end of the decade, a leading charity warned on Tuesday.

MONDAY, Dec. 4 (HealthDay News) -- A study from Finland adds a new twist to the argument that certain antidepressants raise users' suicide risk.

TUESDAY, Dec. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Employers would save themselves money by implementing programs to spot and treat depression in workers, a new U.S. study finds.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - It takes more than just passing along good information to stop the spread of HIV, a new US-government-backed study on HIV/AIDS prevention programs has found.

NEW YORK - The Board of Health voted Tuesday to make New York the nation's first city to ban artery-clogging artificial trans fats at restaurants — from the corner pizzeria to high-end bakeries.

WASHINGTON - An annual report released Tuesday put Minnesota at the top of its health rankings for the fourth straight year, while concluding that the nation's health improved slightly.

SOUTH PLAINFIELD, N.J. - An E. coli outbreak that has sickened at least 22 people — two of them seriously — was linked by health investigators Monday to three Taco Bell restaurants in New Jersey.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many women may fail to recognize bulimia symptoms in themselves, particularly if they don't go to the extremes of self-induced vomiting, new research suggests.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A unit of SunOpta Inc. said it was recalling frozen strawberries used in U.S. smoothie drinks because they may have been contaminated with an organism that can sometimes trigger fatal infections in young children.