MSNBC: Health

Cinderella's tiny feet proved the glass slipper was hers and not her big-hoofed ugly stepsisters. Paris Hilton's size 11 feet, meanwhile, have been called huge, ugly, even "terrifying." In other words, we are most definitely a culture that prefers tiny-footed ladies, and cross-cultural studies have suggested that most people across the world agree.But a new report finds that both men and women of ...    

    

Immigrants for years have paid far more into Medicare's coffers than they have pulled out, effectively subsidizing rising healthcare payments to the aging U.S. population, a new study shows.The analysis from Harvard Medical School showed immigrants generated a $13.8 billion surplus for the U.S. government healthcare program for the elderly in 2009, the most recent figures available.From 2002 throu...    

Infections in U.S. hospitals kill tens of thousands of people each year, and many institutions fight back by screening new patients to see if they carry a dangerous germ, and isolating those who do. But a big study suggests a far more effective approach: Decontaminating every patient in intensive care. Washing everyone with antiseptic wipes and giving them antibiotic nose ointment reduced bloodstr...    

If you carry a purse, you are essentially toting a big bag of bacteria around with you everywhere you go. That's the finding of a new UK study, which claims that women's handbags hosted more bacteria than the average toilet flush.We should note that the research was conducted by a cleaning and "hygiene services" company called Initial, which sells hand sanitizers and surface wipes and has a pretty...    

    

    

    

When your flight crew asks if there’s a physician onboard, chances are your fellow passenger-in need is severely woozy, wheezy or queasy: the three most common in-flight medical emergencies, according to a first-of-its-kind study on airplane illnesses released Wednesday.Fainting flyers account for 37 percent of cases in which flight crews must radio doctors on the ground to seek advice, while card...    

The more than 740 patients who developed fungal meningitis and other infections after receiving tainted back pain shots may have yet another worry: relapses of illness despite months of powerful treatment.Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say an 80-year-old man who developed fungal meningitis at the start of the nationwide outbreak last fall thought he was in the clear ...    

The grandfather got sick first, developing a fever, achiness, diarrhea and other vague but serious symptoms. Within a month, three male relatives were sick, too, with what’s been dubbed the MERS coronavirus. Two of the four men died.The family’s case, described in the New England Journal of Medicine, shows some of the mysteries that public health officials are trying to solve as they grapple with ...    

One of the first provisions of the 2010 health reform law has had its intended effect: shifting costs from hospitals, taxpayers and families to health insurance companies, researchers reported on Thursday.It’s one of the most popular aspects of the law. It requires insurance companies to cover young adults, aged 19 to 26, on their parents’ policies if the families ask. These young adults are the m...    

By Charles Abbott, ReutersWASHINGTON - A strain of genetically engineered winter wheat that was never approved for U.S. sale or consumption was found sprouting on a farm in Oregon, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Wednesday. The wheat was developed years ago by biotechnology company Monsanto Co but never put into use in the face of worldwide opposition to genetically engineered wheat. ...    

Food and Drug Administration officials have turned to Norway to help ease a shortage of injection drugs used to provide nutrition to critically ill premature babies and cancer patients who can’t eat any other way.The agency said Wednesday it immediately will begin importing trace elements, potassium phosphate and sodium phosphate -- drugs used in total parenteral nutrition or TPN -- from a Norwegi...    

My rear end is big. My stomach is huge. My arms are wobbly. I’m enormous. No, I’m more enormous."Fat talk," the body-denigrating phrases many women engage in with their girlfriends may feel like a kind of female bonding, but it can be damaging to self-esteem.The issue drew attention earlier this week in an article in The New York Times, where researchers called fat talk a “contagious” bonding ritu...    

A detailed look at two cases of a deadly new respiratory virus called MERS suggests people who have the disease should be isolated for at least 12 days to avoid spreading it, doctors reported Wednesday. The new germ, a respiratory infection, was first seen in the Middle East and so far has sickened more than 40 people worldwide, killing about half of them. In the report published online in th...