For the first time, the U.S. government has estimated how many people die each year from drug-resistant bacteria.

Officials said more than 23,000 deaths and 2 million illnesses stem from germs that are hard to treat because they've become resistant to drugs.

Almost 60 children were taken to hospital in eastern India after they were mistakenly instructed to swallow a hepatitis B vaccine instead of polio drops, officials said Monday.

The children started vomiting and sweating after they were orally given hepatitis B vaccine, which is normally injected, at clinics in a village in West Bengal state on Sunday, the health officials said.

Eric Abidal said on Sunday that former Barcelona teammate Dani Alves had offered him part of his liver when he needed a transplant last year.

Abidal told Catalunya Radio that Dani Alves, who now wears Abidal's old number 22, "wanted to give me his liver, but it couldn't be" because it would have hurt the Brazil right back's ability to play. The France defender's cousin ended up donating him part of his liver.

Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG said Monday it will propose that Christoph Franz be elected its next board chairman.

The Basel, Switzerland-based company said Franz is being nominated to succeed Franz Humer in a vote at the annual shareholders' meeting in early March.

Researchers in the United States claim to have established a convincing statistical link between gun ownership and homicide, according to a study published Thursday.

The study, which appears in the American Journal of Public Health, challenges the National Rifle Association's claim that increased gun ownership does not lead to higher levels of gun violence.

Early childhood deaths around the world have been cut in half since 1990 but some 18,000 children under five still die every day, according to a new report out Friday.

Around 6.6 million children perished before their fifth birthday last year, compared to 12.6 million in 1990, said the report by UNICEF, the World Bank and the World Health Organization.

Health officials say 2013 already is one of the worst years for measles in the U.S. in more than 15 years.

Before a vaccine became available about 50 years ago, nearly all children got measles by their 15th birthday. In those days, nearly 500 Americans died from measles each year.

A new test -- looking at three genes -- could predict which prostate cancers will turn aggressive, helping avoid invasive treatments for those that will grow more slowly, a study out Wednesday said.

Used alongside existing tests, the analysis will help doctors determine whether treatment is needed or if "active surveillance" would suffice, Columbia University researchers said in the study in "Science Translational Medicine."

Scientists in Spain said on Wednesday they had made mature cells in living mice revert to their youthful, versatile state, in a step toward the goal of tissue regeneration by stem cells.

Right now, the technique is at its earliest stage and is hedged with safety questions, which makes it impossible to envisage in humans.

Many middle-aged men find their waistlines expanding and their sex drive shrinking, symptoms a new study out Wednesday suggests can be traced to a hormone deficiency -- but not the one you might imagine.

Previously, a drop in testosterone production might have been suspected as the culprit, but researchers said a decline in estrogen may be part of the problem.