The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a positive review of a breast cancer drug from Roche that could soon become the first pharmaceutical option approved for treating early-stage disease before surgery.

In documents posted online, FDA scientists said women who received the drug Perjeta as initial treatment for breast cancer were more likely to be cancer-free at the time of surgery than women who received older drug combinations. Although the results come from mid-stage trials of the drug, FDA scientists recommended accelerating approval of the drug.

President Enrique Pena Nieto's plan to tax sugary drinks to curb Mexico's obesity epidemic earned him praise Tuesday from New York's mayor and health advocates but soda makers slammed it as ineffective.

Pena Nieto wants Mexicans to pay an extra peso (almost 8 U.S. cents) for every liter of sweetened drink in a country that guzzles more soft drinks than any other and rivals the United States for the dubious honor of world's most obese nation.

Hard-hitting ads featuring first-person stories from former smokers prompted more than 200,000 Americans to immediately give up tobacco, said the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in a study published Monday.

Half that number are likely to stay off tobacco forever, according to the study that appeared in British medical journal The Lancet.

A U.S. study Monday measuring fathering habits and testicle size suggested that bigger may not be better when it comes to the day-to-day raising of small children.

The research involved 70 U.S. men of varying ethnicities -- most were Caucasian, five were Asian and 15 were African-American. All were the fathers of children aged one to two.

The broadest study of its kind has exposed an entrenched culture of coercive sex among men in six countries of the Asia-Pacific, researchers said on Tuesday.

Reporting in the journal The Lancet Global Health, investigators pointed to startling evidence from interviews with more than 10,000 men in Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea.

A study of mercury contamination from rampant informal gold mining in Peru's Amazon says indigenous people who get their protein mostly from fish are the most affected, particularly their children.

The new research detailed Monday by the Carnegie Institution for Science found mercury levels above acceptable limits in 76.5 percent of the people living in the Madre de Dios region, both rural and urban populations.

Philippines officials on Sunday warned the public against using unlicensed Chinese-made lipsticks and fake copies purporting to be legitimate brands as they may contain high levels of lead.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an advisory saying the products were being sold widely on the streets of many urban areas without the agency's approval.

U.S. doctors on Sunday said a combination of two anti-viral drugs was an option for treating MERS respiratory disease after the therapy was found to work on lab monkeys.

Two drugs -- interferon-alpha 2b and ribavirin -- that are commonly used together against hepatitis C inhibited the spread of the MERS coronavirus in the rhesus macaques species, they said.

An "artificial nose" capable of detecting the odor from germs that lead to blood poisoning could help save many lives and reduce medical costs, a conference heard on Sunday.

Scientists who developed the "nose" said it can show within 24 hours whether a patient's blood has bacteria that cause sepsis, a gain of up to two days over conventional methods.

An overweight South African threatened with deportation from New Zealand because of his obesity was Monday granted a 23-month reprieve.

However, Albert Buitenhuis will not be entitled to any publicly-funded health care over the next two years, associate Immigration Minister Nikki Kaye said.