Stopping by the nursing home or hospital to spend time with loved ones is a holiday ritual for thousands of Americans -- but are you sharing more than gifts and goodies when you visit? According to the Centers for Disease Control

WASHINGTON - More than 35 million people around the world are living with Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia, says the most in-depth attempt yet to assess the brain-destroying illness - and it's an ominous forecast as the population grays. The new count is about 10 percent higher than what scientists had predicted just a few years ago, because earlier ...

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Women who have multiple sclerosis may reduce their risk of relapses after pregnancy if they breastfeed their babies, according to a study released February 18 that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 61st Annual Meeting in Seattle, April 25 to May 2, 2009.

The sex talk is never easy. It's not comfortable for anyone involved - parents are afraid of it, children are mortified by it - which is probably why the talk so often comes after the fact. In the latest study on parent-child talks about sex and sexuality, researchers found that more than 40% of adolescents had had intercourse before talking to ...

CHICAGO - A new study from Italy adds to a mountain of evidence that a mercury-based preservative once used in many vaccines doesn't hurt children, offering more reassurance to parents.

ATLANTA – Mississippi now has the nation's highest teen pregnancy rate, displacing Texas and New Mexico for that lamentable title, according to a new federal report released Wednesday. Mississippi's rate was more than 60 percent higher than the national average in 2006, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The teen pregnancy rate in Texas and New Mexico was ...

Meal replacements in a medically supervised weight loss program are successful in facilitating weight loss, according to a new study conducted at the University of Kentucky. The study appears in the August 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

CHICAGO — Did government health officials "cry swine" when they sounded the alarm on what looked like a threatening new flu? The so-far mild swine flu outbreak has many people saying all the talk about a devastating global epidemic was just fear-mongering hype. But that's not how public health officials see it, calling complacency the thing that keeps them up at ...

Rhode Island Hospital, based in Providence, has been fined $150,000 by the Rhode Island Department of Health after a surgeon operated on the wrong finger of a patient last month. Among the ramifications, the hospital will have to install video cameras in all of its operating rooms and all surgeries will have to be watched by a clinical professional, not on ...

WASHINGTON - Certain breast cancer survivors who load up on fruits and vegetables, eating far more than current U.S. guidelines, can slash their risk the tumors will come back by nearly a third, according to a U.S. study released on Monday.

ADELPHI, Md. - Government experts say the maximum dose listed for Tylenol and dozens of other painkillers should be reduced to help curb deadly overdoses. In a series of votes Tuesday, a Food and Drug Administration panel endorsed lowering the maximum dose of over-the-counter acetaminophen - the key ingredient in Tylenol, Excedrin and other medications. But panelists rejected a proposal to ...

Kelle Shugrue's 7-year-old son eats fresh fruit and vegetables at his public school, rides his bike along neighborhood paths and walked to school last week as part of a community effort to get kids moving. The Shugrue family lives in Somerville, Mass., a Boston suburb hailed by health advocates for its seven-year investment in programs fighting childhood obesity and encouraging healthful ...

For those who are keen to keep fit but low on motivation, a personal trainer is often the best option. But the human version may not be the most effective. Dog owners get more exercise walking their pet than someone with a gym membership, researchers have found. On average they exercise the animal twice a day for 24 minutes each time ...

Her diabetic son wasn't allowed to prick his finger in school to test his blood sugar, and some days the nurse wasn't available, so Kari Christiansen would drive there every two hours to make sure he didn't suffer a serious reaction. Christiansen had to shuttle the then-kindergartner's blood-testing device back and forth from Westchester Primary School. It was banned from the ...

CHICAGO — Doctors are testing a new kind of obesity surgery without any cuts through the abdomen, snaking a tube as thick as a garden hose down the throat to snap staples into the stomach. The experimental, scar-free procedure creates a narrow passage that slows the food as it moves from the upper stomach into the lower stomach, helping patients feel ...

The number of people who have Alzheimer's disease is creeping insidiously higher year after year, adding increasing pressure on the health care system, experts say. A report out today, the 2009 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures, indicates that an estimated 5.1 million Americans over 65 now have Alzheimer's.

Weight loss surgery can reverse diabetes in teens, according to a small study released today in the journal Pediatrics. Researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and five other medical centers followed 78 teenagers with type 2 diabetes, a condition that occurs when the body doesn't respond to the hormone insulin, which helps metabolize food into energy. Eleven of the study ...