Now you see it, now you don’t. A new type of heart stent that works like dissolving stitches, slowly going away after it has done its job, passed its first major test in a large study, doctors said Monday. Abbott Vascular’s dissolving Absorb stent performed as well as a conventional… Read More

Opponents of an effort to repeal California’s new stricter law requiring mandatory vaccines for school children failed to submit enough signatures to qualify for a ballot initiative asking voters to repeal the law, according to some reports. County election clerks reported receiving fewer than 234,000 of the 366,000 signatures needed to… Read More

A New Jersey nurse administering flu shots to dozens of employees of a pharmaceutical company reused syringes, the state Department of Health said Wednesday. State and local health officials, as well as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are recommending testing for hepatitis B and C and HIV,… Read More

Here’s something everyone should know: According to new reports, doctors have discovered a potential problem involving implanted heart valves that hundreds of thousands of people have received. They don’t always open and close properly, possibly because a blood clot has formed that could raise the risk of stroke. Although the… Read More

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists from Ireland, Japan and China won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discovering drugs against malaria and other parasitic diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people every year. The Nobel judges in Stockholm awarded the prestigious prize to Irish-born William Campbell, Satoshi… Read More

There may be a better way to quit smoking, according to a new study. Smokers who switched to special low-nicotine cigarettes wound up smoking less and were more likely to try to quit, researchers found. The study only lasted six weeks, and researchers call the evidence preliminary. But they say… Read More

Make up an ambulance ride, and bill the tax payer. According to the Associated Press, Medicare paid $30 million for ambulance rides… which have no records that any patients got medical care at their destination, no record of the place where they were picked up, and lack other critical information…. Read More

LONDON (AP) — Malaria could be wiped out by 2040, despite the lack of an effective vaccine, previous failed attempts to eradicate the disease and drug resistance problems, the United Nations and Microsoft founder Bill Gates said in a report released on Monday. Gates and Ray Chambers, the U.N. secretary-general’s… Read More

Many women with early-stage breast cancer can skip chemotherapy without hurting their odds of beating the disease — good news from a major study that shows the value of a gene-activity test to gauge each patient’s risk. The test accurately identified a group of women whose cancers are so likely… Read More