New recommendations to expand the use of cholesterol-lowering medication to millions of adults to reduce heart attacks and strokes overestimated risks faced by that population, according to a new study.

An updated clinical guide released by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) last week set new guidelines on who should take cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins.

Women who have taken birth control pills for three years or more face twice the risk of developing the eye disease glaucoma, a top cause of blindness, researchers said Monday.

The study was based on survey answers by 3,406 women over age 40 in the United States, and was presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology in New Orleans.

Pregnant women who are exposed to chemicals known as phthalates found in plastics, lotions and food packaging may face higher odds of giving birth prematurely, a U.S. study said Monday.

The findings are important because prematurity is a leading cause of infant death around the world, said the report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

A Frenchman deemed too fat too fly has finally secured a plane ticket back to Europe after an alternate plan to return by ship fell through, his father said Monday.

Kevin Chenais -- who has a hormone imbalance and came to the United States for treatment -- is due to take an evening Virgin flight from New York to London with his parents, Rene Chenais told Agence France Presse.

For more than 30 years, Indonesian dentist Edi Herman has been fixing the teeth of Jakartans in the rusty chair of his tiny shop, advertising his services with a huge poster of sparkling pearly whites on blood-red gums.

He is one of thousands of low-cost, unlicensed dentists, whose small stores with their lurid signs can be found nestling in grimy alleys and wedged between red-tiled houses across the capital.

An Indonesian woman living near the capital Jakarta has died of bird flu, the health ministry said, the latest death from H5N1 in the country hardest hit by the virus.

The 31-year-old housewife from Bekasi in West Java province is the 163rd fatality from the virus in Southeast Asia's biggest nation, the ministry said in a statement seen Monday.

Turkey on Monday announced a mass vaccination campaign against an outbreak of polio in areas near neighboring Syria.

"We are planning to vaccinate about one million children under five years old," public health agency vice president Mehmet Ali Torunoglu told private NTV television.

A common type of malaria that used to be powerless to infect certain groups of Africans is becoming more potent, putting tens of millions of people at risk, scientists said Friday.

Caused by a mosquito-borne parasite called Plasmodium vivax, the infection is rarely fatal but can lay dormant in the liver and cause chronic recurrences if left untreated.

Thirty-nine House Democrats defected Friday to vote for legislation that would gut significant portions of the new U.S. health care law, the strongest sign yet of party anger over "Obamacare."

Should the Democrat-run Senate approve the measure, which would allow insurers to offer policies that do not meet requirements of the new health care reforms, the White House has said President Barack Obama would veto it.

Alba Diaz runs a special kind of hotel. Her guests are foreigners seeking plastic surgery in a Colombian city that's become a magnet for folks looking for a nip and tuck.

Working in a posh neighborhood of Cali, Colombia's third largest city, the 55-year-old Diaz pampers her clients, from the time they get off the plane throughout their stay at her clinic.