By Debra Sherman
CHICAGO (Reuters) - For years, Bob Clegg’s insurance company paid out some $3,000 a month for doctor visits, drugs and medical devices to treat the health problems caused by his obesity.
In September 2007, when his weight peaked at 380 pounds (172 kg), he had gastric bypass surgery, and now his health issues — [...]

By Gene Emery
BOSTON (Reuters) - Dramatic improvements in U.S. air quality over the last two decades have added 21 weeks to the life of the average American, researchers reported on Wednesday.
Reducing fine particles given off by automobiles, diesel engines, steel mills and coal-fired power plants have added as much as 15 percent of the 2.72 [...]

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. researchers have developed a quick way to test milk for the presence of melamine, an industrial chemical found last year in milk in China that killed at least six children and made thousands sick.
Researchers at Purdue University in Indiana said on Wednesday the method can detect tiny traces of the chemical [...]

By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The sole source of the U.S. salmonella outbreak involving contaminated peanut butter appears to be the Peanut Corp of America’s Blakely, Georgia processing facility, federal officials said on Wednesday.
More than 125 products including cookies, crackers, ice cream and even some pet food have been recalled in connection with the outbreak, [...]

By Gene Emery
BOSTON (Reuters) - Giving steroids to children who are wheezing because of viral or other infections does not help, researchers reported on Wednesday.
And an experimental treatment designed to prevent wheezing may be effective, but it seems to pose too many risks to be recommended, according to studies published in the New England Journal [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers say they have developed a cream that might prevent herpes infection for as long as a week — a potentially big step in protecting women from the sexually transmitted infection.
The cream uses a new kind of therapy called RNA interference to turn off genes that the virus uses to invade cells, [...]

By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An infusion of more than $630 million spearheaded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is intended to help finish the job of eradicating the crippling disease polio, officials said on Wednesday.
The Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rotary International charity joined with the governments of Britain and Germany to [...]

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Research suggests that people who suffer from migraine headaches are at increased risk of also suffering from mood and anxiety disorders.
“An expanding body of literature has shown that migraine headaches are associated with higher rates of mental disorders,” Dr. Jitender Sareen, of the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, and colleagues [...]

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic is spreading to rural areas because people with the preventable disease have quit heavily-infected urban centers for the countryside, an agency official said Wednesday.
United Nations agencies say cholera has killed nearly 2,500 people and infected more than 40,000 in the Southern African country, where the health and sanitation systems [...]

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Efforts to fight obesity among children and teens should include strategies to help them think differently about their eating and exercise habits, researchers conclude based on a review of 64 studies of lifestyle “therapy” and drug interventions.
And it’s important for parents to get involved, especially for pre-adolescent children, Dr. Hiltje [...]