Scientists reported Sunday that they have completed a major analysis of the genetics of breast cancer, finding four major classes of the disease. They hope their work will lead to more effective treatments, perhaps with some drugs already in use.

The new finding offers hints that one type of breast cancer might be vulnerable to drugs that already work against ovarian cancer.

Cuba has unveiled its first manufactured nanopharmaceutical drug -- a tweaked variety of cyclosporine, used to help prevent transplant rejection -- official media reported Saturday.

"Its main advantages are that it can achieve the same favorable effect with a dose three times less powerful, using the most prescribed drug of its kind in its class, and while significantly reducing side effects," lead researcher Dario Lopez told the Communist Party newspaper Granma.

Cambodian villagers armed with a little medical know-how -- and their mobile telephones -- are the nation's new foot soldiers in the fight against drug-resistant malaria.

In the small village of Phnom Dambang near the Thai border, locals know that early detection and treatment is crucial to containing the virulent strain of the mosquito-borne disease that is blighting the region.

Two-thirds of Swiss voters rejected a referendum Sunday to tighten a smoking ban, to the relief of hotels and restaurants, while two cantons split in a vote over keeping tax breaks for rich foreigners.

On the smoking ban, only Geneva voted slightly in favour of tougher controls, while results from the country's other 25 cantons showed that 66 percent rejected it, the ATS news agency reported.

Advisers to European Union regulators have recommended approval of a new anti-clotting drug for use by adults with a common irregular heart rhythm that boosts risk of strokes or blood clots, drugmakers Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Pfizer Inc. said.

The drug, Eliquis, is a crucial one for the two companies, which have been slammed by new generic competition slashing sales of their top-selling drugs. Meanwhile, the partners are trailing competitors in a three-way race for global market share in a new class of anti-clotting drugs expected to be blockbusters, with sales well over $1 billion a year.

New research powerfully strengthens the case against soda and other sugary drinks as culprits in the obesity epidemic.

A huge, decades-long study involving more than 33,000 Americans has yielded the first clear proof that drinking sugary beverages interacts with genes that affect weight, amplifying a person's risk of obesity beyond what it would be from heredity alone.

President Dilma Rousseff on Friday, moving to raise awareness of Brazil's unacceptably high traffic deaths, launched a campaign to halve the number of road accidents by 2020.

A day after official statistics showed that 53 percent of the country's 194-million-strong population was now middle class, she said reducing traffic deaths was essential to ensure that Brazil becomes "not just a great middle class country, but also a great civilized country".

A swine flu vaccine used in 2009-10 is linked to a higher risk of the sleeping disorder narcolepsy in children and teens in Sweden and Finland, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said Friday.

The EU agency studied the effects of the Pandemrix vaccine on children in eight European countries after Sweden and Finland reported higher incidences of narcolepsy among children who were inoculated with the vaccine during the swine flu pandemic in 2009 and 2010.

Teenage girls may prefer the pill, the patch or even wishful thinking, but their doctors should be recommending IUDs or hormonal implants — long-lasting and more effective birth control that you don't have to remember to use every time, the nation's leading gynecologists group said Thursday.

The IUD and implants are safe and nearly 100 percent effective at preventing pregnancy, and should be "first-line recommendations," the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in updating its guidance for teens.

The nation's largest cancer center is launching a massive "moonshot" effort against eight specific forms of the disease, similar to the all-out push for space exploration 50 years ago.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston expects to spend as much as $3 billion on the project over the next 10 years and already has "tens of millions" of dollars in gifts to jump start it now, said its president, Dr. Ronald DePinho.