Health & Medicine

  1. Health & Medicine

    Trans Fats Are Bad, Aren’t They?

    As New York moves to ban trans fats from fried and baked restaurant fare, little attention has been given to the potentially beneficial trans fats in dairy products and meats.

    By Janet Raloff
  2. Health & Medicine

    Catching Flu’s Drift: Vaccines fight unexpected influenza

    Vaccination can prevent three of every four flu infections, even when the vaccines are imperfectly tailored to block the common wintertime pathogens.

    By Ben Harder
  3. Health & Medicine

    Express delivery for cancer drugs

    A new drug-delivery method has dramatically reduced tumors in experiments conducted with mice.

    By Julie Rehmeyer
  4. Health & Medicine

    Salad Doubts

    Researchers are looking into new ways to sanitize harvested produce and prevent foodborne pathogens from infecting people.

    By Aimee Cunningham
  5. Health & Medicine

    Red Heat Might Improve Green Tea

    Roasting green-tea leaves using infrared heat boosts the concentration of various beneficial chemicals in tea brewed from the leaves.

    By Janet Raloff
  6. Health & Medicine

    Bitter Pill: Costs surge for new schizophrenia drugs

    Medications widely prescribed to treat schizophrenia cost hundreds of dollars more each month than does a less popular, older medication that has similar success at alleviating symptoms of the disorder.

    By Bruce Bower
  7. Health & Medicine

    Pain type matters to brain

    Chronic back pain affects different parts of the brain than acute back pain does, magnetic resonance images reveal.

    By Julie Rehmeyer
  8. Health & Medicine

    Indian men are prone to insulin resistance

    Men from India are more likely than those in other large ethnic groups to have a condition that predisposes them to adult-onset diabetes.

    By Nathan Seppa
  9. Health & Medicine

    Milk Therapy

    Breast milk has long been known to be the best food for babies, but compounds in breast milk promise to be a tonic for many adult ills as well.

    By Julie Rehmeyer
  10. Health & Medicine

    A Toast to Healthy Hearts: Wine compounds benefit blood vessels

    Researchers have identified a class of compounds in red wine that might be responsible for much of the beverage's cardiovascular benefit.

    By Christen Brownlee
  11. Health & Medicine

    Cancer Link: Gene regulates progesterone effect on breast cells

    The BRCA1 protein regulates the effect of pro-growth progesterone, which could explain why having a mutated BRCA1 gene predisposes a woman to breast cancer.

    By Nathan Seppa
  12. Health & Medicine

    Test identifies people at cardiac risk

    Measurement of an electrical abnormality in the heart aids doctors in determining who is most at risk for cardiac arrest.

    By Ben Harder