Health Blog

AP - Talk about an extreme makeover: Scientists have transformed one type of cell into another in living mice, a big step toward the goal of growing replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases.

AP - A Palestinian couple locked their disabled son and daughter away for decades out of fear they would ruin the marriage prospects of a healthy child if discovered, police said Wednesday.

Reuters - Researchers studying people with a rare genetic disorder have identified a brain chemical that may play a role in appetite and obesity, a finding they say could lead to new drugs to help some obese people.

HealthDay - WEDNESDAY, Aug. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Fat cells in obese people are "sick" compared to those in lean people, a new study shows.

AP - Government regulators on Wednesday cleared the way for broader use of a blood test that can spare heart transplant patients the ordeal of repeated biopsies to check if their bodies are rejecting the new organ.

Downgrades in the credit ratings of U.S. not-for-profit health care systems and hospitals exceeded upgrades by a 2-to-1 ratio this year for the first time since 2003, according to a report released on Monday by Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.

At least 50 HIV-positive renters in New York City have notified city housing organizations in the past few months that they had to leave their homes or have been evicted because of foreclosures and that they are having difficulty finding new homes, the New York Times reports.

AP - New data shows New York City residents are contracting the virus that causes AIDS at three times the national rate.

AP - What does a company do when there's anecdotal evidence that two of its drugs are equally effective in treating a leading cause of blindness in the elderly, one costing patients $60 per treatment and the other $2,000?

Stanford University officials on Tuesday plan to announce a new policy under which pharmaceutical and medical device companies no longer will have the ability to select continuing medical education courses that they seek to finance for physicians at the university's School of Medicine, the New York Times reports.