Nancy Shute

A report that four young men who are paralyzed below the waist were able to move toes, ankles or knees when their lower spine was electrically stimulated was hailed as a breakthrough.

But it's hard not to be skeptical about anything labeled a medical breakthrough these days, and that's especially ...

If you went to see the Kings of Leon concert on March 28 in Seattle, let's hope you came home with nothing but great memories.

A young woman at that concert in Seattle has come down with measles, which can be spread for days by a person who's infected ...

Would art help remind your kids to brush your teeth? That's the question posed by Health Axioms, a deck of cards that aims to help people to change their health habits for the better.

"Here's your eye doctor handing your four or five cards," says Juhan Sonin, the creative director ...

Later this spring, allergy sufferers will have access to a new form of help: a pill that can replace allergy shots. But the pill works only for grass allergies, and it's not clear how much it's going to cost.

The Food and Drug Administration just approved Oralair, the first ...

Talk to women here in the office, and it quickly becomes clear that we're confused about what to do about mammograms. And no wonder.

Two months ago, a widely publicized Canadian study found that mammograms did not reduce breast cancer deaths, but that study was fiercely criticized by the ...

Bariatric surgery can help obese people lose weight, and excess weight is a big risk factor for Type 2 diabetes. So it makes sense to try to figure out whether the surgery could help control diabetes, too.

So far the answer is yes, at least for some people and for ...

Twenty years ago, many scientists didn't think that genes could cause diseases like cancer. The discovery of the BRCA gene for hereditary breast cancer changed that. Mary-Claire King tells how.

It seems like every cubicle dweller I know is training for a marathon. But then there are those tragic headlines about middle-aged runners keeling over dead at the finish line. Is this really a good idea?

Marathon training actually reduces a person's cardiovascular risk, according to a study presented Thursday ...

The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline warned consumers that some lots of alli, its over-the-counter weight loss drug, appear to have been tampered with after people reported finding the wrong pills in bottles.

The bogus pills were found in bottles bought in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina and Texas, ...

Pediatricians often recommend some mental health counseling for children who have behavior problems like defiance and tantrums. But counseling can be hard to find. Children are much more likely to get help if the counselor is right there in the doctor's office, a study finds.

The children in the study ...

Hospitals are increasingly giving women the option of going through labor or giving birth in a pool of warm water. Laboring in the tub is fine, the nation's obstetricians and pediatricians say, but there's not enough proof that it's safe to actually give birth in one.

The doctors' statement has ...

This could be the simplest bit of health advice ever: Exercise reduces women's risk of breast cancer, no matter what kind of exercise they do, how old they are, how much they weigh, or when they get started.

Researchers in France looked at studies that involved more than 4 million ...

Misinformation about health remains widespread and popular.

Half of Americans subscribe to medical conspiracy theories, with more than one-third of people thinking that the Food and Drug Administration is deliberately keeping natural cures for cancer off the market because of pressure from drug companies, a survey finds.

Twenty percent of ...

Headaches may be the most common human malady, accounting for one-quarter of all doctor visits.

It's almost always just a headache. But what if it's a brain tumor? Shouldn't I get a CT scan or MRI exam just to make sure?

Evidently I'm not alone in that thought. People in ...

The number of people getting colon cancer has fallen by 30 percent over the past decade in people over 50, and much of that progress is due to screening, a study finds.

But a substantial number of people in that target age group still haven't been screened, and a consortium ...

Use of ADHD drugs continues to rise in the United States, but the group whose use is increasing the most may come as a surprise: young women.

An analysis of prescriptions filled from 2008 to 2012 through Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit management company, found that use of ADHD ...

People taking cholesterol-lowering statins often report having muscle pain and other side effects. Many quit taking the pills as a result.

But the statins aren't to blame, according to an analysis that found muscle problems no more likely with statins than with a placebo pill.

Diabetes is the only harmful ...

For more than a decade scientists have been saying that a genomic revolution will transform medicine, making it possible to scan all of a person's DNA to predict risk and customize medical care.

Well, we've got the machines. Where's the revolution?

Getting closer, say researchers at Stanford University, who tested ...

Our bodies may help us remember our lives, fixing experiences in place. By using virtual reality, scientists can make people feel like they're outside their own bodies. And when they do, the brain struggles to remember what happened.

The phenomenon is a bit like the disembodied sensation that some people ...

Surely listening to Pharrell Williams' Oscar nominee "Happy" makes you bounce with joy. Nirvana still makes you want to wail. And old Beatles songs make you feel like everything's going to be all right. But maybe you don't feel anything at all.

Some people lack the ability to get pleasure ...