French cosmetics giant L'Oréal has agreed to stop claiming that some of its high-end skin care products prevent signs of aging, under a deal with the Federal Trade Commission to stave off legal proceedings on grounds of misleading advertising.

The FTC had targeted L'Oreal's skin care lines Lancôme Génifique and L'Oréal Paris Youth Code for stating they featured "scientifically proven" features against signs of aging.

Malaysia has set up a task force to combat dengue fever as deaths from the mosquito-borne tropical disease have soared, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Tuesday.

Najib said he hoped the task force led by his deputy would be able to curb the spiraling number of cases, according to local media reports.

Japanese prosecutors Tuesday laid charges against the local unit of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis in a widening scandal over claims that falsified data were used to exaggerate the benefits of a popular blood-pressure drug.

Prosecutors also indicted former employee Nobuo Shirahashi, 63, alleging he manipulated the data in clinical studies that were later used in marketing the drug Valsartan.

A manual pelvic examination in which gynecologists use their hands to feel around for potentially cancerous masses is not needed for most women, a leading doctors' group said Monday.

The American College of Physicians said women should still see their doctors annually for regular Pap smears and cervical exams to screen for cancer and sexually transmitted infections.

Some childhood vaccines are linked to serious side effects, but they are quite rare and do not include autism, food allergies or cancer, said a review of scientific literature Tuesday.

A host of vaccines commonly given to children under age six were the focus of the systematic review of rigorously conducted studies, published in the peer-reviewed U.S. journal Pediatrics.

New York state can end its three-decade HIV crisis by the year 2020, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday as he announced an ambitious plan to deliver a knockout blow to the epidemic by boosting testing, reducing new infections and expanding treatment.

The governor said the state is aiming to reduce new HIV diagnoses to 750 by the end of the decade — about the same number of tuberculosis cases seen in New York City each year — down from 3,000 expected this year and 14,000 new cases of the disease in 1993. If the state is successful, it would be the first time the number of people living with HIV has gone down since the crisis began with the first widely reported cases in 1981.

A long-term study of women who used ovary-stimulating hormones for fertility treatment found no widespread evidence of a higher cancer risk, researchers said on Monday.

The results appear to contradict a number of studies in recent years that suggested such treatments may increase the risk of the disease. 

In the past decade, billions of dollars have been spent trying to save the lives of mothers in developing countries using strategies — usually inexpensive drugs — deemed essential by the U.N. health agency.

Yet two large analyses of maternal health programs— including one conducted by the U.N. itself — report that the efforts appeared almost useless, raising troubling questions about why all that money was spent.

A new "supercooling" technique keeps rat livers alive three times longer than before, boosting hopes for easing shortages of human transplant organs, scientists said Sunday.

The method involves cooling the livers while flushing them with oxygen and nutrients and preserving them in a solution containing a form of antifreeze.

Thai health authorities on Friday said cigarette packets will carry warnings on the risks of smoking across 85 percent of their surface, in a blow to tobacco companies who had fiercely opposed the move.

The warnings -- featuring gruesome photographs of smoking-related ailments -- will increase from 55 to 85 percent of the surface of both sides of every cigarette packet, according to the kingdom's Ministry of Public Health.