Researchers have found that belly fat, which has earlier been linked to increasing the risk of diabetes and heart disease, also increases the risk of early death. In the study, one of the largest, longest health studies in the world researchers found waist size to be a "powerful indicator" of risk.

The study found that people with the most belly fat had double the risk of dying prematurely as compared to people with less belly fat. This risk held even if the overall body weight was normal.

A study has stated that a common bacterium that causes diarrhea is commonly found in U.S. hospitals and better hygiene and a judicious use of antibiotics would help.

A large clinical trial has found that calcium and vitamin D supplements don’t help postmenopausal women lower their risk of breast cancer. Dr. Rowan Chlebowski, study author and a medical oncologist at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles said, "The message is that there's benefit from calcium and vitamin D for fracture risk, but taking those supplements won't be doing much for breast cancer risk. You wouldn't expect that you're doing it to improve breast cancer outcome."

Canadian and American researchers have discovered a method to revive immune cells that become "exhausted" from fighting the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that leads to AIDS, thereby restoring the person’s immune system’s ability to fight the infection.

Google Inc., through Google.org, is launching “Flu Trends” to track geographic outbreaks of illnesses in time and warn potential victims early enough to enable them to get a preventive vaccine. Working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Flu Trends hopes to track the number of searches by Google users for flu related items like "thermometer" and "cold remedies." According to the Drudge Report "anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur each week," could indicate a flu outbreak in the area.