A brain scan to detect Alzheimer's disease could be available in hospitals worldwide within the next year and could boost efforts to detect the degenerative and fatal condition, experts said on Monday.

The technique, known as a positron emission tomography (PET) scan, can find and analyze a protein known as beta-amyloid, which is linked to Alzheimer's.

A new high-dose chemotherapy regimen has been shown to improve survival of children with high-risk neuroblastoma, a common pediatric cancer, according to a European clinical trial published Sunday.

"The study's results are important for patients with this extremely difficult to treat disease," said lead author Ruth Ladenstein of the University of Vienna and St. Anna Children's Cancer Research Institute in Vienna, Austria.

Contrary to previous research, a study out Sunday showed that flaxseed is ineffective in reducing hot flashes among menopausal women.

"The results were surprising. Pilot study data suggested that flaxseed use was associated with reduction in hot flashes," wrote study lead author Sandhya Pruthi, associate professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Seed sprouts are suspected of being at the root of a deadly E. coli outbreak which has killed 22 people, mainly in Germany, a regional agriculture minister said on Sunday.

Gert Lindermann, who represents Lower-Saxony, said there was not yet definite proof but a connection had been made "involving all the main outbreaks" of the disease, which has also left more than 2,000 people ill.

Two new treatments, including therapy blocking a gene mutation occurring in half of melanoma patients, are prolonging lives of people suffering from the deadliest form of skin cancer, clinical trials unveiled Sunday show.

Vemurafenib neutralizes mutation of the key BRAF gene by inhibiting production of a protein which plays a major role in development of melanoma.

About 7,000 people are being infected with AIDS each day and about half of the 34 million people with HIV do not know they have it, according to a U.N. report released to mark the disease's 30th anniversary.

The UNAIDS agency said more money, less waste and smarter programs are urgently needed to consolidate gains made in the war on AIDS and HIV.

Caretaker Agriculture Minister Hussein Hajj Hassan and Director-General of the Health Ministry Walid Ammar denied on Saturday that there are E. coli cases in Lebanon.

Ammar told Voice of Lebanon radio station that Lebanon has an “active system that detects epidemics, and doctors always report any case they receive.”

Lebanon imposed a ban on Friday on all vegetable imports from the European Union in response to an outbreak of E. coli poisoning that has killed at least 18 people, caretaker Agriculture Minister Hussein Hajj Hassan said.

"We have decided to ban the import of all types of vegetables from Europe," Hajj Hassan told Agence France Presse.

Campaigners in India have demanded that children under 14 be banned from swallowing live fish in a traditional treatment for asthma administered at a festival every year in June.

Hundreds of thousands of sufferers gather annually in Hyderabad in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh to gulp down small live fish and a special herb paste.

An entirely new strain of the drug-resistant MRSA superbug has been found in cow's milk and people in Britain and Denmark, a study published on Friday said.

The previously unseen variant "potentially poses a public health problem," said lead researcher Mark Holmes, senior lecturer in preventive veterinary medicine at Britain's Cambridge University.