Richard Harris

Alex Yiu was born a seemingly healthy baby. But by age 2, his muscle control and speech were deteriorating. His baffling condition took a decade to diagnose. The reanalysis of a DNA test was the key.

Will a genetic test for Type 1 diabetes risk be valuable to parents, despite its shortcomings? Now many parents don't know their kids have this condition until they end up in the hospital.

Three scientists will share this year's Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine by discovering the mechanism cells use to sense and respond to oxygen.

Three scientists who studied how cells sense and adapt to oxygen levels have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine — the first recipients of prestigious awards for 2019.

Major U.S. pharmacies have pulled Zantac and its generic equivalent off the shelves after concern about a contaminant that poses a small cancer risk.

The biggest study published to date on vitamin C as a treatment for sepsis couldn't say it helped patients. But the paper does hint that people who got the treatment were more likely to survive.

Health officials say people with vaping-related illness have used more than 200 products sold under 87 brands. That's complicating efforts to identify the substances contributing to lung damage.

With hundreds of unexplained cases of vaping-related illness, and the sharp rise in youth vaping, the Trump administration is acting to crack down on kid-friendly vape flavors.

The Food and Drug Administration is cautioning the company that it is violating the law by marketing its vaping products as a safer alternative to cigarettes.

Medical and genetic data from more than a million Americans are now in scientific databases. Some programs hoard the data, while others share widely with scientists, hoping to speed medical discovery.

A project that shares medical information from 500,000 volunteers is driving innovative research around the world. The richness of the database means scientists are motivated to make it even better.

Researchers have long hoped to find out if genes contribute to sexual orientation. A new study of genetic data from thousands of people hints there may be some link, but it's still far from clear.

Scientists around the world are working to correct a problem with genetic health information — too much of it is currently based on samples of Europeans.

A Canadian study suggests that fluoride consumed by pregnant women can affect the IQ of their children. No single study provides definitive answers, but the findings will no doubt stir debate.

The FDA is once again proposing graphic warning labels for tobacco products. A previous effort was blocked by lawsuits. The new warnings are less graphic than the agency's previous attempt.

Drugs tested in the Democratic Republic of Congo are effective in treating Ebola, scientists say. They have run a study in the midst of a deadly epidemic and in the face of armed assaults on doctors.

The proportion of people who say they have a "great deal" of confidence in scientists to act in the public interest increased from 21% in 2016 to 35% in 2019, according to the Pew Research Center.

Sepsis, the body's overreaction to infection, strikes more than a million Americans a year and kills more than 250,000. Evidence suggests that regulations can improve its diagnosis and patient care.

Traditional blood tests still do a better job flagging common inherited diseases. Gene sequencing can be useful for detecting some conditions, but the results can be difficult to interpret.

It turns out you aren't simply a clone of cells from the womb. Over a lifetime, mutations create a patchwork of tissues made with pieces that have subtly different genetic signatures.