Brain injuries from falling account for half of all elderly deaths, a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says. In 2005, brain injuries accounted for 50 percent of unintentional fall deaths and 8 percent of nonfatal fall-related hospitalizations among older adults.

Traumatic brain injuries, which are caused by a bump or blow to the head due to a fall, caused nearly 8,000 deaths and 56,000 hospitalizations in 2005 among Americans 65 and older, the study found

Doctors have successfully saved the life of an advanced skin cancer patient by treating him with clones of his own immune cells. The 52-year-old man from a small town in Oregon was declared free of melanoma two years after treatment.

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who treated the dying patient extracted white blood cells, the key component of the immune system, and grew the infection-fighting T cells in the laboratory. The cloned T cells, which had been vastly expanded, were then reinfused to the patient to fight the cancer

The global sales of biotech drugs went up by 12.5 percent in 2007 to over $75 billion. It is almost double the 6.4 percent growth of the overall pharmaceutical market in the same year, according to an IMS Health report.

But compared to 2006 levels, biotech sales actually slowed down from an 18.2 percent growth due to competition from generic biotech medicine from overseas, higher standards imposed by insurers in covering treatments and questions of safety over some new therapies

Drinking up to six cups of caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee daily is associated with a somewhat smaller rate of death from heart disease, a new study shows.

Raising doubts about the old myth that coffee is associated with increased deaths in men or women, the new study finds that both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee consumption is actually beneficial for health

A South African court on Friday banned unauthorised clinical trials of vitamin therapies for AIDS by a German physician, saying it could pose a health risk.

Physician Matthias Rath and American doctor David Rasnick, a former adviser to President Thabo Mbeki, were accused by the lobby group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and the South African Medical Association (SAMA) of conducting illegal AIDS drug trials among poor communities