disease

Did you celebrate a birthday last month? Congratulations. You were born in the month with the lowest lifetime risk of disease.

Let's see: A nurse who cared for a dying Ebola patient is allowed to fly on a commercial flight days later despite having a low-grade fever. Another worker who handled the patient's lab specimens takes a cruise and has to be quarantined aboard the ship. Officials with the hospital where the man…

The country’s first Ebola patient—Thomas Eric Duncan, who was visiting Dallas from West Africa—has died. But the fact that he was  mistakenly sent home when he first showed up at a Texas hospital complaining of symptoms, does not exactly inspire confidence in our healthcare system.

Manners maven Emily Post probably would have disapproved, but British researchers say if you want to protect yourself against germs, you should pass on the traditional handshake and instead exchange a fist bump, especially with your doctor.

Should older adults be routinely screened for Alzheimer's disease or memory problems? Maybe, maybe not. A government panel says there's not yet enough data to recommend either for or against it. The panel's uncertainty reflects the complexity of the issue at a time when scientists are progressing…

Whenever Vivian Davis feels like doing something, she does it. So when she felt like joining the Peace Corps, she did - at age 78.

Maybe it's part of the push for "random acts of kindness" or a reaction against all the vitriol and general mean-spiritedness in our society or - as a recent study found - because doing something unselfish helps lower inflammation and improves our health.

In a surprise announcement, Tom Hanks, 57, revealed on the Late Show with David Letterman that he has diabetes. While on the show to promote his new film Captain Phillips, he told Letterman that he learned at age 36 that he had high blood sugar. Recently his doctor told him: "You've graduated.…

In the 1970s, a cluster of cases of unexplained severe joint pain and swelling was breaking out in a small three-township area in Connecticut, as a 1976 New York Times article detailed. Fortunately, the mysterious affliction soon came to the attention of a team of Yale University medical…