Health | featured news

Back-to-school time means shopping for school or dorm room supplies, picking classes and savoring summer's waning days.

Charla Nash, the victim of a horrific attack by a 200-pound chimpanzee, appeared Friday at a Connecticut legal hearing, where officials are deciding whether she can sue the state for $150 million... Speaking clearly and looking remarkably recovered from the disfiguring attack and her 2011 face transplant, Nash spoke exclusively to NBC News about her recovery and her hopes for the future.

The CDC says there is only one good treatment left to ward off the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea. Lab studies are showing an increasing resistance to the type of drugs that doctors use to treat gonorrhea, called cephalosporins. That leaves only a few options, which are not as effective. “Cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea could potentially mean untreatable gonorrhea,” says Dr. Gail Bolan, director of the Division of STD Prevention at the CDC. “Untreatable gonorrhea is a real possibility.”

HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that is most commonly passed between people during vaginal or anal intercourse. But it can also be transmitted through genital-to-genital, or hand-to-genital contact, which is how the participants in the study likely got the virus, the researchers said. Out of the more than 40 sexually transmitted HPV strains, more than a dozen have been identified as cancer-causing, according to the National Cancer Institute.

How can a cancer come back after it’s apparently been eradicated? Three new studies are bolstering a long-debated idea: that tumors contain their own pool of stem cells that can multiply and keep fueling the cancer, seeding regrowth.

The new class of drug, which can be taken orally, is designed to protect the brain by combating the damaging effects of inflammation. Results from early stage clinical trials have yet to be announced, but studies on animals suggest the therapy could be effective against a wide range of conditions which also include motor neurone disease and complications from traumatic brain injury.

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved a new weight loss drug from Vivus Inc. that many doctors consider the most effective therapy in a new generation of anti-obesity pills designed to help patients safely shed pounds.

Nabel said no vaccine being tested today "is likely to hit it out of the park," but many researchers do feel advances in broadly neutralizing antibodies are key to developing a highly successful HIV vaccine. "It's really a new day when we start to think about where we are with AIDS vaccines," Nabel said.

Nobody loves a party pooper. And it seems nobody these days loves the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Few Americans had even heard of it until three years ago, when the advisory board with the 10-syllable name challenged convention by saying women under 50 might not benefit from mammograms, just as the debate over health care was coming to a boil.

For folks without air conditioning, an electric fan may seem like a life-saver in a steaming summer like this one. But researchers who looked at existing studies say it's possible fans do more harm than good when the temperature soars above 95 degrees. That's because blowing hot air over your body might actually increase heat stress and your risk of heat-related illness -- even if you feel like the fan is cooling you down. Better ideas: get out of your hot house and into a cool mall or library for a few hours; take cool showers.