Health, Virus | featured news

Health officials say 2012 was the nation's worst year for whooping cough in nearly six decades....

A pacemaker has been built inside a heart by converting beating muscle into cells which can control the organ's rhythm, US researchers report. The heartbeat is controlled by electrical signals and if these go awry the consequences can be fatal. Scientists injected a genetically-modified virus into guinea pigs to turn part of their heart into a new, working pacemaker.

A new virus from the same family as SARS which sparked a global alert in September has now killed two people in Saudi Arabia, and total cases there and in Qatar have reached six, the World Health Organisation said.

The World Health Organization said Monday it is too soon to say whether there could be an outbreak of a SARS-like killer respiratory disease after health officials in Britain announced they detected a related virus in a severely ill patient from the Middle East.

There's no link between chronic fatigue syndrome and a mouse virus known as XMRV, says a study out today that researchers say eliminates a possibility raised by a study in 2009. Researchers tested the blood of 293 people with and without the debilitating condition and found no trace of the virus.

Nearly 20 years after hantavirus was first identified in the U.S., doctors are under pressure to quickly learn more about the pervasive and deadly disease. In his 30-plus years as a doctor, Bruce Tempest had never seen anything like it.

A U.S. health panel may soon make HIV testing as standard a practice as checking cholesterol levels, a move that would fundamentally change how the virus is detected and treated.

An AIDS-free generation: It seems an audacious goal, considering how the HIV epidemic still is raging around the world. Yet more than 20,000 international HIV researchers and activists will gather in the nation's capital later this month with a sense of optimism not seen in many years - hope that it finally may be possible to dramatically stem the spread of the AIDS virus.

A prestigious scientific journal is retracting a controversial 2009 report that linked chronic fatigue syndrome to a virus.

USA TODAY consulted experts to target germ-laden spots and offer tips to avoid bacteria and viruses that could make you sick.