The sperm count in French men dropped by nearly one-third between 1989 and 2005 and the quality of sperm also declined, a study said Wednesday.

The sperm count fell at a rate of about 1.9 percent a year, said the authors of the report covering more than 26,600 men over the 17-year period and published in the journal Human Reproduction.

An experimental breath test can diagnose colorectal cancer with an accuracy of over 75 percent, Italian researchers reported on Wednesday.

The electronic "nose" detects key molecules emitted by tumors, a technique that is also being used in pioneering diagnostics for lung and breast cancer.

For anyone who has had hyperemesis gravidarum, the pregnancy-induced vomiting that has caused Prince William's wife Kate to be hospitalized, the term "morning sickness" is way off the mark.

"When you're vomiting 30 to 40 times a day and admitted to hospital, it's a completely different complication of pregnancy," said Rachel Treagust, 28, who suffered from HG, as it is known, with all three of her children.

For Alzheimer's patients and their families, desperate for an effective treatment for the epidemic disease, there's hope from new studies starting up and insights from recent ones that didn't quite pan out.

If the new studies succeed, a medicine that slows or even stops progression of the brain-destroying disease might be ready in three to five years, said Dr. William H. Thies, chief medical officer of the Alzheimer's Association. The group assists patients and caregivers, lobbies for more research and helps fund studies.

The bacterial zoo inside your gut could look very different if you're a vegetarian or an Atkins dieter, a couch potato or an athlete, fat or thin.

Now for a fee — $69 and up — and a stool sample, the curious can find out just what's living in their intestines and take part in one of the hottest new fields in science.

Flu season in the U.S. is off to its earliest start in nearly a decade — and it could be a bad one.

Health officials on Monday said suspected flu cases have jumped in five Southern states, and the primary strain circulating tends to make people sicker than other types. It is particularly hard on the elderly.

The American Psychiatric Association has voted to review its classification of certain mental disorders, turning autism into a single, all-encompassing category and removing Asperger's syndrome as a separate ailment.

This weekend's vote by the group's board of trustees marks the first revision of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1994 and the fifth since it first came about.

Rocio Ramirez poses for a portrait with a colorful Mexican shawl covering one side of her near naked body, revealing her erotic side to prove that HIV has not robbed her sexuality and self-esteem.

Smiling with straight black hair for another shot, Ramirez holds a female condom as part of a photographic workshop to show that women with HIV/AIDS can still feel beautiful despite the virus and the side effects of their treatment.

Jordan's health minister has said that two deaths in the kingdom from a SARS-like virus earlier this year which were confirmed by the World Health Organisation last week were isolated cases.

"Since April, the health ministry has not recorded any case of the coronavirus in Jordan," Abdullatif Wreikat said in comments carried by the official Petra news agency on Sunday.

South Africa, home to the world's largest HIV caseload, on Saturday unveiled a 1.5 kilometer AIDS ribbon in Johannesburg, with activists and officials pledging to curb the epidemic.

Created from over 6,000 red T-shirts pinned together, the ribbon was rolled out at Constitution Hill, which houses the country's Constitutional Court, and unfurled through the streets of Braamfontein.