A new approach to killing cancer cells that uses a patient's own immune system has beaten back leukemia in 88 percent of adults, U.S. researchers said.

The report by scientists in New York offers more good news for the burgeoning field of cancer immunotherapy, which uses what some describe as a "living drug" that was hailed by Science magazine as the breakthrough of 2013.

The flu is hitting young and middle aged people in the United States particularly hard this season, as a tough flu strain re-emerged and too few people were vaccinated, health authorities said Thursday.

More than 60 percent of all severe flu cases this season in the United States were in people 18-64 years old -- or about double the usual rate, they said.

A dramatic rise in thyroid cancer has resulted from overdiagnosis and treatment of tumors too small to ever cause harm, according to a study that found cases nearly tripled since 1975.

The study is the latest to question whether all cancers need aggressive treatment. Other research has suggested that certain cancers of the prostate, breast and lung as well as thyroid grow so slowly that they will never become deadly, and that overzealous screening leads to overtreatment.

Hundreds of thousands of young women living in impoverished areas of rural Nepal have developed a debilitating uterus condition which usually only occurs after the menopause, Amnesty International said Thursday.

In a report, Amnesty blamed "ingrained discrimination" for the widespread prevalence of uterine prolapse, a condition which sees the uterus descend into and protrude out of the vagina, with many women falling victim after having to return to work in the fields days after giving birth.

It is a ritual supposed to keep women "pure", but an increased understanding of the severe health risks of extreme forms of female genital mutilation appears to be slowly rolling back its prevalence in Somalia's northwest.

In the self-declared Somali republic of Somaliland, most women over 25 have undergone the most extreme form of FGM, known as "pharaonic". This entails removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, cutting out flesh from the vulva and sewing up the outer labia, leaving only a tiny orifice for the passage of urine and menstrual flow.

U.S. obstetricians are being told to show more patience in the delivery room.

New guidelines say doctors should give otherwise healthy women more time to deliver their babies vaginally before assuming that labor has stalled. The recommendations are the latest in years of efforts to prevent unnecessary cesarean sections.

Health complications stemming from Japan's 2011 tsunami have killed more people in one Japanese region than the disaster itself, the local authority said Thursday.

Data compiled by officials and police show that almost three years after the huge waves smashed ashore, 1,656 people living in Fukushima prefecture have died from stress and other illnesses related to the disaster, compared with 1,607 who were killed in the initial calamity.

Thanks to smartphones, email, video games and photo sharing are available at the touch of a finger.

But attach a special case and that same phone can produce an electrocardiogram (EKG) from the electrical impulses in your hand and send it to a doctor.

China can prevent nearly 13 million tobacco-related deaths by 2050 by fully implementing a set of neglected anti-smoking policies it had already agreed to, researchers said Wednesday.

The estimated number of lives saved, more than the population of Greece, would result from a 40-percent lower smoking rate than that projected on current trends, said a paper in the British Medical Journal.

Several thousand protesters have joined a demonstration in central Athens after the Health Ministry ordered the closure of the country's entire state-run outpatient clinic network for one month to reorganize the health system.

The protest organized by a Communist labor union ended peacefully Tuesday outside the ministry.