Health & Medicine

  1. Health & Medicine

    Beware the bats

    Fruit bats in Bangladesh regularly trigger small outbreaks of Nipah virus, a measleslike pathogen that causes brain inflammation and death.

    By Brian Vastag
  2. Health & Medicine

    Phages break up plaques

    Phages, viruses that infect bacteria, dissolve plaques in the brains of mice with an Alzheimer's-like disease.

    By Brian Vastag
  3. Health & Medicine

    Sticky treatment for staph infections

    Honey from New Zealand gums up bacteria, offering a potential new means of combating difficult-to-treat infections.

    By Brian Vastag
  4. Health & Medicine

    Tea—Milking It

    Adding milk doesn't diminish tea's antioxidant bounty, research finds.

    By Janet Raloff
  5. Health & Medicine

    Visualizing Cancer: Images of tumors can detect gene expression

    Subtle features in X-ray images of tumors let radiologists infer which genes are active in the cancerous growth.

    By Patrick Barry
  6. Health & Medicine

    Early Start: Fetuses generate immune response to vaccination

    A fetus can manufacture immune cells and antibodies in direct response to vaccine given to the mother during pregnancy.

    By Nathan Seppa
  7. Health & Medicine

    Stem cells not required

    Insulin-producing cells in the pancreas proliferate by cell division, unlike other body tissues, which regenerate from adult stem cells.

    By Patrick Barry
  8. Health & Medicine

    Circadian Fix: Viagra may lessen effects of jet lag

    Sildenafil, the male-impotence drug marketed as Viagra, helps laboratory rodents recovery from circadian disruptions similar to jet lag.

    By Nathan Seppa
  9. Health & Medicine

    Chocolate Constituent Bests Fluoride

    The beans used to make chocolate can also render a tooth-decay-fighting extract; unfortunately, it's bitter, not chocolaty.

    By Janet Raloff
  10. Health & Medicine

    Nail-gun injuries shoot up

    Nail-gun injuries among do-it-yourself carpenters have tripled since 1991.

    By Nathan Seppa
  11. Health & Medicine

    Migraines in men linked to heart attack risk

    Men who experience migraine headaches are somewhat more likely to have heart attacks than are other men.

    By Nathan Seppa
  12. Health & Medicine

    Dangerous History

    The genome of the TB bacterium has small but significant pockets of diversity, giving scientists new targets for preventing and treating the disease.

    By Emily Sohn