Health, Disease | featured news

Chinese scientists have for the first time found strong evidence of how humans got infected with a new strain of bird flu: from chickens at a live market. In a small study of four patients who caught the new H7N9 virus, Chinese scientists compared swabs from birds at live markets in eastern China to virus samples from patients. The scientists found the virus from one patient was nearly identical to one found in a chicken. The research was published online Thursday in the journal Lancet.

The death toll in China's bird flu crisis stood at 10 on Friday, as Hong Kong authorities announced plans to test all poultry imported from the mainland.

A strain of bird flu that has been found in humans for the first time in eastern China is not a cause for panic, the World Health Organization said on Monday, as the number of people infected rose to 21, with six deaths.

Researchers might have found the Holy Grail in the war against cancer, a miracle drug that has killed every kind of cancer tumor it has come in contact with, the New York Post reported. The drug works by blocking a protein called CD47 that is essentially a "do not eat" signal to the body's immune system, according to Science Magazine.

By tracking one patient’s immune response, scientists have tracked how a series of mutations led to an antibody that can defeat many H.I.V. strains.

Genetically altering a patient’s immune cells has, for the first time, produced remissions in adults with a deadly type of acute leukemia. In one patient, all trace of the disease vanished in 8 days.

Australian experts are concerned about the threat of a new type of drug-resistant pandemic flu that is circulating in the population at large. The swine flu strain has learned how to dodge the antiviral Tamiflu and, though rare, is emerging outside of hospitals.

With the cost of genetic sequencing plunging, more people, especially parents, are using DNA testing to uncover genetic diseases in their offspring.

Cambridge University scientists say they have seen four-stranded DNA at work in human cells for the first time and wonder if it might provide a target for the development of novel anti-cancer treatments.

It has the makings of a science fiction movie: Zap someone's brain with mild jolts of electricity to try to stave off the creeping memory loss of Alzheimer's disease....