The number of adults with diabetes worldwide has more than doubled since 1980, with almost 350 million now affected, according to a new study published in The Lancet medical journal.

Scientists from Imperial College London and Harvard University analyzed blood sugar date of 2.7 million people aged 25 and over across the world and used the results to estimate diabetes prevalence.

Menthol cigarettes are marketed to African-American youths in a "predatory" manner through more ads and lower prices near California high schools, said a U.S. study released on Friday.

Researchers at Stanford University said their findings, published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, show that menthol cigarette makers are aiming to get young people addicted and are harming the nation's health.

Alzheimer's disease could cause a global cash crunch in coming generations -- as people begin to regularly live to 100 -- and must be considered a serious fiscal danger, experts said Thursday.

Already 24-37 million people worldwide live with the incurable form of dementia, and that number is projected to reach 115 million by 2050, a panel of Alzheimer's disease experts told the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Rights groups including Amnesty International on Friday urged Indonesia to revoke a regulation which they say legalizes female circumcision in the mainly Muslim country.

Women's rights activists called on the government to withdraw a decree issued by the health ministry in November authorizing certain medical professionals to carry out the procedure on baby girls.

Twenty-five mostly veiled-female doctors and medical students look nervously toward a projection screen deep in the bowels of Benghazi's newest hospital.

With little sign that Libya's four-month old war will end quickly, the class is learning how to help patients — and themselves — identify and treat the psychological trauma caused by conflict.

Women need to beware that while breast implants are safe, they are not meant to last a lifetime and could lead to problems later on, the top U.S. drug agency said Wednesday.

"Breast implants are not lifetime devices. The longer a woman has silicone gel-filled breast implants, the more likely she is to experience complications," the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a report.

Blame the potato chip. It's the biggest demon behind that pound-a-year weight creep that plagues many of us, a major diet study found. Bigger than soda, candy and ice cream.

And the reason is partly that old advertising cliche: You can't eat just one.

Smokers who are diagnosed with prostate cancer are more likely to have aggressive tumors and face a higher death risk from the disease than non-smokers, U.S. researchers said Tuesday.

Men who smoked at the time of diagnosis faced 61 percent higher risk of dying from prostate cancer and a 61 percent higher chance that the cancer would come back compared to men who never smoked, said researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and University of California, San Francisco.

The World Health Organization published Tuesday new global guidelines for expanding AIDS treatment, focusing for the first time on homosexuals, who face discrimination in many countries.

"If we do not pay major attention to the epidemic in key populations, we will not be able to eliminate HIV" -- the virus that can lead to AIDS, said Gottfried Hirnschall, WHO director of the HIV/AIDS department.

High doses of drugs aimed at lowering cholesterol are linked to increasing numbers of new diabetes cases in patients, said a review of multiple studies on the topic published Tuesday.

However, those same high doses helped dramatically lower the incidence of cardiovascular problems in patients, leaving doctors to balance the benefits and risks according to each individual patient.