A class of drugs designed to lower blood pressure also slightly brakes the progression of dementia among the elderly and may even boost brain power marginally, a study published on Friday said.

Doctors in Cork, Ireland, looked at data from a long-term study involving 361 patients aged in their late seventies on average who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or a form of dementia.

A Singapore-based group fighting the spread of viral hepatitis called for greater political will to combat the disease Friday, as new data showed it killed one person every 30 seconds in Asia.

Ding-Shinn Chen, chair of NGO the Coalition to Eradicate Viral Hepatitis in Asia Pacific (CEVHAP), said the latest figures show that one million people die from the illness in the region annually, up from 695,000 in 1990.

Australian doctors Friday called for the smacking of children by parents to be made illegal, saying it was too easy to blur the line between reasonable discipline and abuse.

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians said Australian laws needed to be changed to make all forms of corporal punishment illegal "so the law protects children from assault to the same extent that it does all people".

The new respiratory virus that emerged in the Middle East last year appears to make people sicker faster than SARS, but doesn't seem to spread as easily, according to the latest detailed look at about four dozen cases in Saudi Arabia.

Since last September, the World Health Organization has confirmed 90 cases of MERS, the Middle East respiratory syndrome, including 45 deaths. Most cases have been in Saudi Arabia, but the mysterious virus has also been identified in countries including Jordan, Qatar, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Tunisia. MERS is related to SARS and the two diseases have similar symptoms including a fever, cough and muscle pain.

U.S. scientists said Wednesday they have found a genetic link to allergies, which also exists in people with connective tissue disorders.

The findings in the journal Science Translational Medicine show that a single genetic pathway may open the door to conditions such as asthma, food allergies and eczema.

A video of surgery conducted on a teenager with a power drill by doctors who claimed their state-run hospital could not afford the medical equivalent has caused an outcry in the former Soviet republic of Moldova.

Nikolai Kurka, the surgeon who performed the surgery later posted on the Internet and broadcast on Moldovan television, said he was one of 16 doctors who used home improvement tools in the absence of adequate equipment.

A flexible electrical circuit one-fifth the thickness of food wrap and weighing less than a feather could improve the movement of artificial limbs by tapping into signals from the brain, its Japanese developers say.

The team at the University of Tokyo said the device, embedded in to an ultra-thin film, is unique since it works even after it has been crumpled into a ball or stretched.

Fears of an outbreak of the deadly MERS virus in Saudi Arabia and construction in the holy city of Mecca have forced cuts in the numbers of pilgrims permitted to perform this year's hajj.

Millions of Muslims during the annual pilgrimage head to Mecca and Medina, Islam's two holiest sites, providing a possible means for MERS to spread around the globe as pilgrims who may become infected return to their home countries.

A rare case of raccoon rabies is responsible for killing both a U.S. kidney donor in 2011 and his transplant recipient 18 months later, U.S. researchers said Tuesday.

The report in the July 24 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association describes the final results of an investigation into the case, which was announced by U.S. health authorities in March.

U.S. regulators on Tuesday released a review of scientific data that shows menthol cigarettes are harder to quit than regular kinds, and asked for public input on a possible ban.

The mint-flavored cigarettes do not appear linked to a higher risk of disease, but do likely pose "a public health risk above that seen with non-menthol cigarettes," said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.