The first kick at the World Cup opening ceremony will be made by a paraplegic wearing an Iron Man-like robotic bodysuit controlled by signals from the brain.

Brazilian doctor Miguel Nicolelis led a team of 156 scientists from around the world to create the futuristic exoskeleton, which was designed to enable paralysis victims to walk.

An Ohio woman whose medical record was posted to Facebook, revealing her name and a syphilis diagnosis, has sued the hospital where she was treated and the worker who accessed her information.

The 20-year-old Cincinnati woman, who filed the lawsuit this week in Hamilton County court, said that the events of the case were set in motion in September, when she refused to tell her ex-boyfriend why she was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

Uganda's AIDS commission on Friday called an HIV bill passed by parliament "nonsensical", and urged the country's president not to sign it into law.

"My advice to the president is not to sign the bill," Vinand Nantulya, who chairs the Uganda AIDS Commission -- a government-run body, told reporters.

Soft drinks should be targeted like tobacco with consumer warning labels that spell out the risk of obesity and other maladies, American advocates of a war on soda say.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest brought together health professionals other experts this week to plot a strategy to turn around public attitudes toward the sugary drinks.

Muslims pilgrims from around the world are pouring into the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, undeterred by the spread of the MERS virus which has killed 284 people in the kingdom.

The mysterious Middle East Respiratory Syndrome is considered a deadlier but less transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that appeared in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died.

Nutrition therapy has saved the lives of millions of malnourished infants, but may not restore an imbalance in gut bacteria that is key to long-term health and vitality, researchers said Wednesday.

In a paper in the journal Nature, the team identified a hitherto invisible and possibly long-lasting complication of severe hunger.

Researchers said Wednesday they have found the first direct evidence that the potentially deadly Middle East respiratory virus, or MERS, jumps directly from camels to humans.

The virus has hit Saudi Arabia the hardest, killing 282 people out of 688 infected, according to the Saudi health ministry's latest figures.  

GlaxoSmithKline PLC will pay $105 million to dozens of states to settle allegations that it unlawfully marketed its asthma drug Advair and the antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin.

Under the settlement announced Wednesday, the London-based pharmaceutical also agreed to rules that bar it from paying doctors to promote its products; providing financial incentives that encourage salespeople to market drugs for unapproved uses; marketing drugs using results from inadequate studies or making unapproved claims that a product was "better, more effective, safer or has less serious side effects," according to a statement from California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris.

Autism in childhood may be linked to higher levels of steroid hormones in the womb during early foetal development, researchers said on Tuesday.

These hormones, which play a key phase in brain development at three to four months of pregnancy, may also explain why the condition is far more common among males than females, they said.

Saudi Arabia, which is grappling to contain the spread of a frequently deadly respiratory virus, announced Tuesday that a review of the illness led authorities to sharply revise upward the number of confirmed infections and deaths from the disease.

The surprise disclosure followed the unexpected firing of the kingdom's deputy health minister, heightening concerns about the country's ability to halt the spread of the Middle Eastern respiratory virus. He was the second senior Saudi health official to lose his job in less than two months.