It's a devastating case that serves as the medical warning we didn't even know we needed. An organ donor unknowingly bequeathed her undetected, malignant cancer at the same time as her organs.

Doctors have reported a case where three patients died from breast cancer which they contracted from a single organ donor, a 53-year old woman with the disease whose kidneys, lungs, liver and heart were transplanted. After suffering a stroke in 2007 the woman’s organs were donated to five people, but her diagnosis was not known to doctors and four patients contracted aggressive “donor derived” breast cancers.

Results from a large international study show that risks from taking daily low-dose aspirin outweigh the potential benefits for older people in generally good health.

Someday doctors may prescribe sugar pills for certain chronic pain patients based on their brain anatomy and psychology. And the pills will reduce their pain as effectively as any powerful drug on the market, according to new research. Northwestern Medicine scientists have shown they can reliably predict which chronic pain patients will respond to a sugar placebo pill based on the patients’ brain anatomy and psychological characteristics.

A year ago, a 24-year-old woman with depression was given an unusual prescription by her doctor: a weekly swim in cold water. The patient, Sarah, was filmed as part of the BBC documentary series The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs, presented by Christoffer van Tulleken, a doctor and researcher at University College London.

MIT professor Dina Katabi is building a gadget that can sit in one spot and track everything from breathing to walking, no wearables required.

As a type of immune cell, it has always been considered one of the good guys. But in a stunning breakthrough in schizophrenia research, scientists say the "macrophage" immune cell can go rogue, causing havoc in the brain. "Macrophage" means "big eaters" in Greek and is a fitting name for the cell because - when behaving - it digests cellular debris and foreign substances.

A "ground-breaking" drug that helps people with diabetes re-grow insulin-making cells has been developed. About 19,000 people live with Type 1 of the condition in Wales and 90% have less than 5% of these cells left. This means they have to inject insulin but it is hoped the new drug will mean patients may not have to in the future. The trials are being conducted by researchers at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board and two people have already been given the drug.

Engineers at the University of British Columbia have developed a new ultrasound transducer, or probe, that could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners to as little as $100. Their patent-pending innovation—no bigger than a Band-Aid—is portable, wearable and can be powered by a smartphone.

A senior official at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has received millions of dollars in payments from companies that are involved in medical research.

In a bid to combat the exorbitant, greed-driven pricing schemes of pharmaceutical companies and increase the availability of essential generic medications,

On Amazon, you can shell out about $15 to buy pills made of cellulose, titanium dioxide, gelatin, and dye. None of these ingredients have any medical effect, but customers report taking these pills for pain relief, to reduce excessive sweating, and even to quit smoking. It’s not surprising, really. Medical quackery has a long and proud history, and so long as there’s gullible people, there will be somebody selling snake oil. But here’s the rub: Right on the bottle, in big, blue letters is the word “placebo.” The only claim the manufacturer makes about these pills is that they are guaranteed not to contain any kind of medicine.

Scientists have discovered a new way of treating skin wounds in mice by tricking the cells in the wound into becoming healing surface skin cells. The findings raise the prospect of being able to develop simple, non-surgical treatments for human wounds in the future. Large skin wounds and ulcers are painful and occasionally life-threatening. When the surface of the skin is ruptured, epithelial cells, which make up the outer layer of the skin, migrate towards the wound in an effort to seal up the injury.

As an opioid epidemic spreads across the western world, researchers believe they’re close to developing a non-addictive painkiller. Figures from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) estimate that about 115 people in the country are overdosing on opioids every single day. Aside from the financial costs such an addiction brings to a national healthcare system, it can be hugely traumatic for the person addicted to these drugs, and for their families.

Patient complaints are pushing up suicide rates among doctors, a leading medic has said as it emerged that female doctors are up to four times more likely to take their own lives than those in other professions. The number of physicians ending their own lives is on the rise, Dr Clare Gerada has warned as she said that one of the main reasons seems to be that patients are now encouraged to make complaints which doctors find "shatter their sense of self" even when they are trivial or unjustified.

Probiotics are a booming business, with sales in the billions of dollars each year and millions of customers in the US alone. Companies claim that the microbial concoctions can help consumers do anything from lose weight to sleep better, but researchers report inconsistent effects on people’s microbiomes.

It's entirely possible, albeit rare, for patients taking antibiotics or antipsychotics to develop a sticky, black mess on top of their tongue. Warning: possibly NSFL.

Doctors created the bionic penis using skin from Wardle’s arm and nerves from his legs before attaching it during a 10-hour procedure in June, according The Sun. Wardle suffered through a painful, 10-day erection following the surgery and was told he had to wait six weeks before having sex -- something he’d never been able to do prior to the procedure.

Taking a low-dose aspirin every day has long been known to cut the chances of another heart attack, stroke or other heart problem in people who already have had one, but the risks don't outweigh the benefits for most other folks, major new research finds.

Scientists for the first time have used CRISPR gene editing to halt the progression of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) in a large mammal, according to a study by UT Southwestern that provides a strong indication that a lifesaving treatment may be in the pipeline. The research published in Science documents unprecedented improvement in the muscle fibers of dogs with DMD – the most common fatal genetic disease in children, caused by a mutation that inhibits the production of dystrophin, a protein critical for muscle function.

A potential treatment for sudden liver failure could cut the need for transplants, say scientists at the University of Edinburgh. The liver has an incredible natural ability to repair itself, but this can be lost in some injuries including severe drug overdoses. The therapy is a cancer drug that restores this regenerative potential.

 Most UK and US cases occur after patients have unprotected sex in endemic countries.

How did British medical worker Janet Parker become the world's last victim of smallpox? By Monica Rimmer.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved the first generic version of EpiPen and EpiPen Jr (epinephrine) auto-injector for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including those that are life-threatening (anaphylaxis), in adults and pediatric patients who weigh more than 33 pounds. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA gained approval to market its generic epinephrine auto-injector in 0.3 mg and 0.15 mg strengths.

Experimental gene therapies have yielded promising results in early trials. But the drugs have left some patients worried that success will not last. Scientists are edging closer to defeating a longtime enemy of human health: hemophilia, the inability to form blood clots. After trying for decades to develop a gene therapy to treat this disease, researchers are starting to succeed. In recent experiments, brief intravenous infusions of powerful new treatments have rid patients — for now, at least — of a condition that has shadowed them all their lives.

It’s one of the most common medical procedures in hospitals across the world. So why are patients getting needled with painful, unmonitored catheters in places they shouldn’t be?

Two thirds of cases of deadly heart failure are being missed by GPs - amid warnings that an NHS target culture is fuelling a “medical emergency”. Leading cardiac experts said women and older patients were faring worst, amid “dangerous” failures to spot the life-threatening condition which can be treated with cheap pills.

The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective is a network of tech-fueled anarchists taking on Big Pharma with DIY medicines.

A boy who had large parts of the right side of his brain removed due to a slow-growing tumor made a nearly full recovery in the three years after his surgery, with other areas of his brain compensating for the loss, researchers reveal this week in Cell Reports. Their case study highlights the brain’s tremendous ability to adapt to such losses and will help researchers...

Grow-your-own organs could be available for desperately ill patients within five years, after scientists successfully transplanted bioengineered lungs into pigs for the first time.

A Harvard scientist thinks he's reached a new milestone: a genetic test that helps identify people who are at high risk of having a heart attack. Can he convince doctors to use it? "I think--in a few years, I think everybody will know this number, similar to the way we know our cholesterol right now," muses Sekar Kathiresan, director of the Cardiovascular Disease Initiative at the Broad institute and a professor at Harvard Medical School.

At Chicago’s most intense ERs, the degree of mayhem rivals that of a war zone. Working there can take a heavy toll—and yield immense rewards. By Kim Bellware, Illustrations by Amrita Marino.

Contrary to what you might have been told, IBS is not just all in your head! Here you will learn about the main reasons why people end up with IBS.

As knowledge of pain and the highly addictive nature of opioids has grown, so has the knowledge grown about pain and its origins. A pain specialist explains the intricacies, and how treatment is changing as a result.

A new 3D color medical scanner invented by father and son scientists in New Zealand recently scanned its first human subject, according to a news release from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. The novel imaging device, called the MARS spectral x-ray scanner, can capture enhanced detail of the body's chemical components—such as fat, water, and disease markers—by measuring the x-ray spectrum to produce images in color. Producing more detailed images than MRI or CT may allow physicians to identify and diagnosis diseases earlier.