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.

A Japanese research institute Tuesday said it was probing its own study that promised a 'game changer' way to create stem cells, a feat hailed as revolutionary for the fast-developing field.

The findings, published by Japanese researcher Haruko Obokata and American partners in a January edition of the British journal Nature, outlined a simple and low-tech approach in the quest to grow transplant tissue in the lab.

Social contact and regular exercise are key to aging well and living a longer life, according to newly presented research.

In fact, feeling extremely lonely can increase an older person's chances of premature death by 14 percent, an impact nearly as strong as that of a disadvantaged socioeconomic status, according to John Cacioppo, psychology professor at the University of Chicago.

The doctors were out of ideas to help 5-year-old Charlotte Figi.

Suffering from a rare genetic disorder, she had as many as 300 grand mal seizures a week, used a wheelchair, went into repeated cardiac arrest and could barely speak. As a last resort, her mother began calling medical marijuana shops.

A saliva test for teenage boys with mild symptoms of depression could help identify those who will later develop major depression, a new study says.

Researchers measured the stress hormone cortisol in teenage boys and found that ones with high levels coupled with mild depression symptoms were up to 14 times more likely to suffer clinical depression later in life than those with low or normal cortisol levels.

On an icy night last month, a man entered a grocery store here, walked past the displays of cake mix and paper towels, and went into the bathroom, where he injected himself with heroin.

Hours later, the man was found dead in the bathroom with a needle still in his arm, authorities said. They believe the man was one of more than 80 across the country who have died in recent weeks after injecting heroin laced with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opiate.

A new report finds that one or two of every 100 babies born in the United States now are conceived with advanced fertility help.

In vitro fertilization, or IVF, in which eggs and sperm are mixed in a lab dish, led to a record 61,740 babies in 2012. That is 2,000 more than the previous year and 1.5 percent of all births in the nation.

Saudi Arabia says a Saudi man has died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 60 the number of deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.

The Health Ministry said that the man died in a Riyadh hospital on Sunday.

China will provide safe havens for parents to abandon unwanted children across most of the country, despite debate on whether they could see more babies dumped, state media reported.

The country has set up 25 so-called baby hatches in 10 provinces and major cities since June 2011, the official Xinhua news agency said Sunday. More will be built in another 18 regions, it added, citing the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA).