Health & Medicine

  1. Health & Medicine

    Heartening Responses: Depression drugs may aid survival after heart attack

    Depressed patients recovering from heart attacks receive big heart-health benefits by taking prescribed doses of the antidepressant drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

    By Bruce Bower
  2. Health & Medicine

    Epilepsy surgery stands test of time

    Brain surgery for people with severe epilepsy keeps many of these patients free of seizures for decades.

    By Nathan Seppa
  3. Health & Medicine

    Stem cell shift may lead to infections, leukemia

    Aging of blood-producing stem cells could be responsible for the relatively high incidence of infections and myeloid leukemia in the elderly.

    By Christen Brownlee
  4. Health & Medicine

    Running Interference: Fresh approach to fighting inflammation

    Two experimental drugs stop inflammation in mice by preserving a natural inflammation inhibitor.

    By Nathan Seppa
  5. Health & Medicine

    Sleepy teens haven’t got circadian rhythm

    High schools that begin classes as early as 7:30 a.m. deprive teenagers of sleep, and attempts to reset an adolescent's biological clock fail to solve the problem.

    By Nathan Seppa
  6. Health & Medicine

    Stepping Off the Scale

    While walking, obese people alter their gait to minimize both energy expenditure and the stress on their knee joints.

    By Ben Harder
  7. Health & Medicine

    Attack on Elephantiasis: Antibiotic offers weapon against tropical scourge

    An antibiotic called doxycycline can cure people of elephantiasis, a parasitic disease, by killing the bacterium that the parasite needs to survive.

    By Nathan Seppa
  8. Health & Medicine

    Alcohol increases bacterium’s virulence

    Drinking alcohol can increase the ability of one type of bacteria to cause disease.

    By Christen Brownlee
  9. Health & Medicine

    Ready-to-eat spinach bears tough microbes

    Bagged spinach may contain a significant number of bacteria, many of which are resistant to several antibiotics.

    By Christen Brownlee
  10. Health & Medicine

    Raisins may combat cavity-causing bacteria

    Raisins may fight the bacteria that cause cavities rather than contribute to tooth decay.

    By Christen Brownlee
  11. Health & Medicine

    Heart attack treatment: Better late than never

    A new study contradicts the notion that heart attacks run their course in less than a day and suggests that even delayed treatment can preserve endangered heart tissue.

    By Ben Harder
  12. Health & Medicine

    Cocaine abusers get more heart aneurysms

    Regular cocaine users are about four times as likely as nonusers to have an aneurysm in a coronary artery.

    By Nathan Seppa