BANGKOK (Reuters) - The world's first trial of a dengue fever vaccine being developed by France's Sanofi Pasteur and due for release in 2014 has seen "very promising" results in Thailand, a specialist involved in the tests said on Friday.

TOKYO/LONDON (Reuters) - Germany has joined France in suspending the use of Takeda Pharmaceutical's Actos diabetes drug, due to worries about a possible link to cancer.

BERLIN (Reuters) - New data shows that bean sprouts are the most likely source of the outbreak of E.coli which has killed 30 people so far, all but one of them in Germany, the country's health authorities said on Friday.

LONDON (Reuters) - A novel variant of swine flu has emerged in Asia with a genetic adaptation giving some resistance to Roche's Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline's Relenza, the two mainstay drugs used to tackle the disease.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong has ordered GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) to recall an pediatric antibiotic manufactured in France over the presence of a plasticizer in the product, raising safety and quality concerns.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Health officials in Ohio said on Thursday that eight people had been sickened in the state as a result of a growing salmonella outbreak that federal officials say has now spread to 15 states.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - World leaders at a U.N. AIDS summit launched a plan on Thursday to try to eliminate by 2015 most new HIV infections among children, who inherit the condition from already infected mothers.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - To the likely delight of nagging parents, a new study shows that people who eat more fruit and veggies tend to live longer.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A class of drugs meant to improve symptoms of an enlarged prostate gland actually increase the chance of getting a more serious form of prostate cancer, health officials said on Thursday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Millions of children's lives and billions of dollars could be saved if vaccines were more widely available in 72 of the world's poorest countries, according to a series of studies published on Thursday.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Washington's governor on Friday vetoed most provisions of bill to establish state licensing for cultivation and distribution of medical marijuana, saying she did not want to put state employees at risk of federal prosecution.

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (Reuters) - When the first ambulance pulled up to Tuscaloosa's main hospital after Wednesday's tornadoes, trauma coordinator Andrew Lee opened its doors to a sickening sight: three dead children.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Pregnant women who live or work with smokers may be at slightly higher risk of having a stillbirth, suggests a study that adds to evidence that even secondhand smoke can harm unborn babies.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.S. envoy to the United Nations told the Security Council on Thursday that troops loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi were increasingly engaging in sexual violence and some had been issued the impotency drug Viagra, diplomats said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Virginia U.S. District Court jury has ordered Allergan Inc to pay $212 million to a man who claimed that injections of wrinkle-smoothing Botox left him with brain damage.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Courts in China have jailed 14 people, two of them for life, for selling milk powder tainted with the industrial chemical melamine, state media reported on Friday.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many women have low blood levels of vitamin D early in pregnancy, but whether that's a problem for their developing babies is uncertain, researchers have found.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An appeals court ruled on Friday the Obama administration can continue using federal money to fund human embryonic stem cell research, a possible avenue toward new treatments for many medical conditions.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - When it comes to treating high blood pressure, people may be more likely to stick with certain types of medication than others, a new study suggests.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hospitals that improve medical care for elderly patients, and reduce deadly errors, will get millions of dollars under an incentive program launched on Friday that aims to cut overall Medicare costs.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Parents may soon be able to find out if their unborn child is prone to any inherited diseases, researchers said on Thursday, after developing a non-invasive technique to draw the entire gene map of the human fetus. By analyzing a sample of the mother's blood, which contains DNA from the fetus, scientists in Hong Kong and the United States were able to identify all the DNA strands that belong to the child and piece them together.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - More than 30 million Americans admit to drunken driving in the previous 12 months and more than 10 million say they drove while on illicit drugs, according to a survey of driving habits between 2006 and 2009.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Children from homes where incense is regularly burned have a higher risk of developing asthma, according to a Taiwanese study suggesting that a particular genetic variation could also be involved.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate on Wednesday agreed to avert a 25 percent pay cut for doctors treating patients covered by the Medicare health program for the elderly.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The biggest overhaul of the U.S. food safety system in decades took a major step toward becoming law on Wednesday when House Democratic leaders folded it into a must-pass bill to fund the U.S. government.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Kids who breathe secondhand smoke are more likely to struggle with mental health problems, suggests a large new study of British children.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women seeking medical abortion, sometimes called the "abortion pill," often first undergo an ultrasound test, but a new study suggests that may be an unnecessary step.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Listening to music appears to have a calming effect on hospital patients hooked up to breathing machines, according to a new report.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Doctors in Germany have captured a live birth by open MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) for the first time, offering insight into potential pregnancy complications, Berlin's Charite hospital said on Wednesday.

LONDON (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) gave its backing on Wednesday to a new molecular test for tuberculosis made by Cepheid which can rapidly diagnose TB, one of the world's biggest killer diseases.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Using condoms may sometimes be justified to stop the spread of AIDS, Pope Benedict says in a new book, in a major shift that relaxes one of the Vatican's most controversial positions on their use to combat the disease.

PUNTA DEL ESTE, Uruguay (Reuters) - World health officials recommended on Saturday limiting additives that make cigarettes more palatable, but they postponed until 2012 a number of other issues after five days of deliberations.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Kidney disease patients treated with Merck& Co Inc's cholesterol-lowering drug Vytorin were about 16 percent less likely to have a heart attack or other cardiovascular problem than patients given a dummy pill, according to a new study.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Celldex Therapeutics Inc said its experimental vaccine for the most common type of brain cancer met the main goal of extending survival time for patients without a progression of the disease in a mid-stage trial.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - There may be a seed of truth amidst the many health claims for pomegranate juice, researchers from Israel said Thursday, at least for kidney patients on dialysis.

Bangalore (Reuters) - Canadian biopharmaceutical company Helix BioPharma Corp said its experimental cancer treatment was placed on clinical hold by U.S. regulators, seeking additional information about the product's durability.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - School-age children whose mothers tightly control their diets may be prone to overeating, while those with moms who pressure them to eat tend to be fussy about food, a new study finds.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The company that makes the highly popular narcotic painkiller Darvon has pulled the drug from the market because it can cause fatal heart rhythms, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A proposal to overhaul the costly Medicare and Medicaid health programs met opposition on Thursday in a closed-door meeting of a presidential commission looking for ways to balance the U.S. budget.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Babies born late at night or in the wee hours of the morning may have a slightly higher risk of rare brain problems compared to infants delivered during the day, suggests a new study.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It may be possible to predict which women will develop a dangerous complication of pregnancy called pre-eclampsia weeks before they ever show the first symptoms, an international team of researchers reported Monday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Patients who cross borders in search of cheaper, more available fertility treatment can now choose from more than 100 countries but may be putting themselves and their babies at risk, experts said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Even seemingly gentle antibiotics may severely disrupt the balance of microbes living in the gut, with unforeseen health consequences, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cancer patients who die at home do so more peacefully -- and their caregivers end up doing better emotionally, too, researchers reported on Monday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The food industry is jeopardizing U.S. public health by withholding information from food safety investigators or pressuring regulators to withdraw or alter policy designed to protect consumers, said a survey of government scientists and inspectors.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People taking opioid painkillers for extended periods of time are at greater risk of problems if they have been prescribed more potent forms of these drugs, new research shows.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vaccine maker Sanofi Aventis asked U.S. regulators on Monday to approve a new flu vaccine that uses a short, thin needle.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Nearly half of surgeons who earned more than $1 million from companies that make orthopedic devices did not disclose it when they published medical journal articles, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The common asthma drug albuterol can help patients with multiple sclerosis, perhaps by tamping down an overactive immune system, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fewer than half of U.S. mothers breastfeed their newborns for even half as long as advised and just 22 percent still do so at one year, government researchers reported on Monday.