The number of Ebola cases has risen in Guinea and Sierra Leone for the second consecutive week, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

In Guinea, 16 new cases were found in the week ending June 7, with 15 more found in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

Popular over-the-counter antacids for treating heartburn, like Prilosec, are linked to a 20 percent higher risk of heart attack, researchers said Wednesday.

The study in the journal PLOS ONE was based on a large data-mining study of nearly three million health records, and was carried out by scientists at Stanford University.

A woman has tested negative for the potentially deadly MERS virus in a Hong Kong hospital, authorities said Thursday, as an outbreak in South Korea triggers alarm elsewhere in Asia.

The unidentified woman had sought treatment at a clinic near the southern Chinese city's Tsing Yi rail station for a runny nose and fever after returning from a trip to South Korea.

A U.S. advisory panel urged regulators to approve a new cholesterol drug that promises to reduce death from cardiovascular disease.

The panel on Tuesday voted 13 to three in favor, saying that makers Regeneron and Sanofi had shown that the benefits of Praluent (alirocumab) lowering bad cholesterol (LDL-C) outweigh its risks.

A single vaccine shot, rather than the recommended triple dose, may be enough to protect women against cervical cancer, a study said on Wednesday.

If further work validates the findings, there could be major gains for campaigns to vaccinate young women in poor countries, the authors said.

Paraplegic Venerando Acabal wriggles on a rust-eaten bed to soothe painful bed sores, in misery but also fearful that privatization plans for the Philippines' only bone hospital will rob him of his refuge.

The state-run Philippine Orthopaedic Center, a cramped and dizzying maze of rickety stretchers that spill out of humid wards into dingy hallways, has treated tens of thousands of patients for free since it opened in 1945.

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye has postponed a planned trip to the U.S., her spokesman said Wednesday, amid growing public alarm over the MERS outbreak which has now claimed nine lives.

The decision to delay the June 14-18 visit came after Park's administration came under fire for what critics say has been an insufficient response to the crisis.

Health officials are trying to track down people who may have been in contact with a woman with a rare and deadly form of hard-to-treat tuberculosis.

The woman has an extremely drug-resistant form of the disease, which is impervious to most TB drugs. Three to four cases are reported each year in the United States, on average.

Some widely used diabetes medicines help control blood sugar without the heart risks suggested by earlier research, new studies find.

Although reassuring on safety, the results disappointed some doctors who had hoped the drugs would do better and help prevent heart problems, the top cause of death for people with diabetes.

With one out of four U.S. doctors older than 65, the American Medical Association adopted a plan Monday to help decide when it's time for aging senior physicians to hang up the stethoscope.

The nation's largest organization of doctors agreed to spearhead an effort to create competency guidelines for assessing whether older physicians remain able to provide safe and effective care for patients.