This year's flu season could be especially severe, US health authorities warned Thursday, adding that genetic mutations mean the vaccine won't be as effective against some of the most prevalent flu strains.

So far this season, most flu patients in the United States have contracted seasonal influenza A H3N2 viruses.

Obesity and extreme obesity can reduce life expectancy by up to eight years and deprive people of as much as 19 years of good health, according to a study published on Friday.

The research -- a mathematical model based on U.S. health data -- should be a useful tool for doctors advising patients who are worryingly overweight, its authors said.

Environment Minister Mohammed Mashnouq asked the ministry of health to take strict measures against all hospitals, laboratories, private clinics and beauty centers responsible for illegally disposing their medical waste products in sea, LBCI reported on Friday..

Mashnouq's step came after he received from the Lebanese Union of Professional Divers photos of huge amounts of medical waste material piling off Lebanon's coast.

At least 11 people have lost their sight after undergoing free cataract surgery at a camp in northern India, local authorities say, as fears grow the final figure will be far higher.

Officials said 62 people had the surgery at a village camp run by a medical charity on November 4, and they were trying to ascertain how many people had lost their sight.

A panel of experts convened by U.S. health regulators failed Wednesday to decide whether a lifetime ban should be lifted on gay men donating blood, following two days of heated deliberations.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which takes into account the 17-member committee's suggestions, did not indicate when it would make a decision.

A new compound, tested so far on rats, shows promise in restoring functions lost by paralyzing injury to the spinal cord, a study said on Wednesday.

Called intracellular sigma peptide (ISP), the drug helped lab animals with severe spinal injury recover the ability to urinate or move, or both, it said.

China will stop its controversial practice of using executed prisoners as a source of transplant organs from next month, a Chinese newspaper reported Thursday, a promise it has made repeatedly in the past.

High demand for organs in China and a chronic shortage of donations mean that death row inmates have been a key source for years, generating heated controversy.

Egypt reported on Wednesday four new deaths from bird flu, taking to seven the number of people that the H5N1 virus has killed in the country so far in 2014.

The latest deaths from H5N1, a strain that has killed more than 400 people worldwide since first appearing in 2003, were reported in the North African country in the past two weeks.

International researchers said Monday they have made steps toward understanding why the most commonly used drugs for osteoporosis worldwide, known as bisphosphonates, may also prevent some kinds of lung, breast and colon cancers.

If confirmed in clinical trials, the findings could accelerate the use of drugs like alendronic acid (Fosamax), zoledronic acid (Reclast, Zometa) and ibandronic acid (Boniva) to prevent tumors or treat them in their early stages, according to two studies in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Intellectually disabled women in India are routinely locked up in institutions where they suffer sexual or other abuse and are "treated worse than animals", a report by a human rights group said Wednesday.

Women are often dumped in overcrowded, state-run institutions lacking basic facilities in India, where mentally ill and disabled people are "ridiculed, feared, and stigmatized", the Human Rights Watch report said.