Chocolate milk has long been seen as the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down, but the nation's childhood obesity epidemic has a growing number of people wondering whether that's wise.

With schools under increasing pressure to offer healthier food, the staple on children's cafeteria trays has come under attack over the very ingredient that made it so popular — sugar.

Afghanistan is the worst place in the world to be a mother and Norway is the best, an annual report released Tuesday said.

"Afghanistan has the highest lifetime risk of maternal mortality and the lowest female life expectancy in the world," putting it at the bottom of the Mothers' Index, which has been compiled for the past 12 years by the nonprofit group Save the Children.

Surgery appears to be a better treatment option for early prostate cancer than "watchful waiting," particularly for younger patients, according to a Swedish study published Thursday.

In the first clinical trial examining the impact of surgically removing the prostate gland, the team followed 347 randomly chosen patients for the procedure, and closely watched 348 others, according to the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

A certain gene in some monkeys can help boost vaccine protection against simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a trait that could help researchers develop better AIDS vaccines for humans, suggested a study out Wednesday.

Researchers vaccinated a large group of rhesus monkeys and then exposed them to SIV repeatedly over the course of two weeks. Half became infected, but the other half did not.

The U.S. government said Tuesday it is taking steps to remove from the market a host of online products that promise to cure HIV, herpes, Chlamydia and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The products, mainly sold on the Internet but also available in some retail outlets, include names like Medavir, Herpaflor, Viruxo, C-Cure, and Never An Outbreak.

The wrong approach to wiping out the mosquitoes that cause dengue infections could lead to worse epidemics in the future, according to a study released Tuesday.

Targeting only mosquito larvae, and not adults, with insecticides may work in the short run, but could result in higher resistance in the insects and less disease immunity among humans, especially in urban settings, the study found.

Male doctors are four times more likely to be disciplined for misconduct than female medics, according to a new Australian study which found the biggest cause of complaint was sexual misbehavior.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne analyzed 485 cases where doctors had been found guilty of misconduct and disciplined in Australia and New Zealand between 2000 and 2009.

An expert panel on Thursday unanimously voted in support of a second new hepatitis C drug, Vertex Pharmaceuticals' telaprevir, which studies suggest can boost cure rates of the liver disease.

The advisory panel, which makes recommendations to the Food and Drug Administration, on Wednesday lent its support to a similar drug, boceprevir, made by pharmaceutical giant Merck.

A simple checklist that parents fill out in the waiting room may help doctors someday screen for warning signs of autism as early as a baby's first birthday.

San Diego pediatricians tested the tool with more than 10,000 babies at their 1-year checkups, looking for such things as how the tots babble, gesture and interact with others.

With some genetic sleuthing, scientists have fingered a likely culprit in the spread of leprosy in the southern United States: the nine-banded armadillo.

DNA tests show a match in the leprosy strain between some patients and these prehistoric-looking critters — a connection scientists had suspected but until now couldn't pin down.