First time parents should think twice about owning a cat if they have relatives with eczema, a skin disease, a new study finds. A gene mutation and exposure to cats at birth may increase a child's risk of developing eczema during their first year, researchers from the UK and Denmark say.

Other than environmental causes, eczema runs in families and is linked to functional faults in the gene that produces filaggrin (FLG), a protective protein in the skin. Having the mutant FLG gene increased the risk of eczema in a baby's first year twofold. Adding exposure to a cat quadrupled that risk, researchers say

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers not to buy or use fraudulent cancer "treatments" available on the Internet that come in many forms, including pills, tonics, and creams and are sold under various names.

The federal agency has sent letters warning more than two dozen companies to stop selling false products that claim to prevent or cure cancer. Medicinal products and devices intended to treat cancer must gain FDA approval before they are marketed, the agency said Tuesday

About one-third of children in pediatric intensive care units experience frightening delusions that stay with them for a longer time, a new study has found. Powerful hallucinations where children reported seeing various animals like cats and spiders were most common in children who had to be sedated for more than two days, and in youngsters who were admitted on an emergency basis.

According to a study in the first May issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, these delusional memories put the children at far higher risk of post traumatic stress disorder

The Virginia Department of Health said Monday that last year's report of 730 confirmed cases of rabies in animals were the highest since 1982 when the rabies reached 745 cases.

Most of the reported cases were in wild animals, the highest being the raccoons with 359 cases, skunks were second with 185 and foxes with 90. Also included were 36 cases of rabies in cats and five in dogs

Cats reduce stress in people's life and protect their owners from having a heart attack, a study suggests.

The 10-year study, done by the researchers at the Stroke Research Center at the University of Minnesota, involved 4,435 Americans, aged 30 to 75. Research shows that those who never had a cat had a 40 percent higher risk of having a heart attack and a 30 percent greater risk of death from other cardiovascular disease than compared to those who either have a cat or had cat before