French researchers have identified a new human immunodeficiency virus, the first derived from gorillas, a report said Monday. The three previous HIV variants came from chimpanzees. The new findings indicate that gorillas, in addition to chimpanzees, are likely sources of HIV, the researchers concluded in a report published in the weekly Nature Medicine journal. The new virus, called RBF 168, was detected in a 62-year-old woman who moved to Paris from the western Africa nation of Cameroon, the report says. ...

Divorce causes more than bitterness and broken hearts. The trauma of a split can leave long-lasting effects on mental and physical health that remarriage might not repair, according to research released this week. "People who lose a marriage take such damage to their health," said Linda Waite, a sociologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois. Waite and co-author Mary Elizabeth Hughes, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, found that divorced or widowed people have 20 percent more ...

North Korea fired a pair of short-range missiles toward the Sea of Japan, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Saturday. Kristen Diane Parker, who worked at Rose Medical Center in Denver, has admitted to secretly injecting herself in a bathroom and using unclean syringes as replacements for patients, investigators said. She had hepatitis C, which she believes she contracted through using heroin and sharing dirty needles while she lived in New Jersey in 2008, authorities said. She was a surgical ...

A former hospital employee may have exposed hundreds, or even thousands, of surgical patients to hepatitis C after taking their fentanyl injections and replacing them with used syringes filled with saline solution, authorities say. Kristen Diane Parker, who worked at Rose Medical Center in Denver, has admitted to secretly injecting herself in a bathroom and using unclean syringes as replacements for patients, investigators said. She had hepatitis C, which she believes she contracted through using heroin and sharing dirty needles ...

A government advisory panel voted Tuesday to recommend eliminating prescription drugs that combine acetaminophen with narcotics -- such as Vicodin and Percocet -- because of their risk for overdose and for severe liver injury. The panel, assembled by the Food and Drug Administration, voted 20 to 17 to advise the FDA to remove such prescription combination drugs from the market. The group recommended that the FDA "send a clear message that there's a high likelihood of overdose from prescription narcotics ...

Pop icon Michael Jackson, 50, who died Thursday afternoon after being rushed to a Los Angeles hospital in cardiac arrest, had a long history of confirmed health problems, in addition to rumored conditions. In 1984, Jackson was burned while singing for a Pepsi-Cola commercial in Los Angeles, when the special effects smoke bomb misfired. He had to have major surgery on his scalp, and said that because of the intense pain he developed an addiction to painkillers. He ...

The death of boxing champion Mike Tyson's 4-year-old daughter after a treadmill accident highlights the issue of hidden dangers in the home. While most parents know enough about covering outlets and keeping poisonous household cleaning products locked away from the reach of their small children, most homes still have less obvious safety hazards that can have disastrous results for curious tots. "Parents often overestimate their child's intelligence, and underestimate their abilities," explains Chrissy Cianflone, Director of Program Operations at ...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received a candidate vaccine virus for swine flu from one institution Friday, spokesman Thomas Skinner said in an e-mail. The CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have also created a candidate vaccine virus for swine flu, also known as 2009 H1N1, using reverse genetics, he said. "Suitable viruses will hopefully be sent to manufacturers by end of next week," Skinner wrote. Once that happens, vaccine makers will tweak the virus ...

More than 100 students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens, New York, have fallen ill recently. Some have tested positive for swine flu, health authorities say. At least 50 people in the United States have contracted the virus, officials say. Some of those who tested positive at the New York high school recently went to Cancun, Mexico, for spring break. By Tuesday, the number of deaths believed attributable to swine flu climbed to as many as 152 ...

The outbreak of swine flu, which appears to have originated in Mexico, has crossed borders and datelines, spooked the travel industry -- and thrown up some unfamiliar and uncertain terminology. Just what is the World Health Organization, based in Geneva, Switzerland How does it differ from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in Atlanta, Georgia What is the difference between an infectious disease and a contagious disease Or between being held in quarantine and being held in isolation ...