Greece will issue free condoms and syringes to heroin addicts to halt an alarming rise in new HIV cases, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

"There is an imperative need for immediate action to limit the spread of infection," deputy health minister Michalis Timosidis said in a parliamentary document.

Few people want to be wide awake during their colonoscopy exams, but new research suggests too many are getting extra sedation treatment, costing as much as $1 billion yearly in potentially needless services.

Use of anesthesiologists to monitor sedation during colonoscopies and other digestive imaging tests has more than doubled in recent years, and they're used most often for low-risk patients who typically don't need the extra help, the study authors said.

A drug designed to treat nervous spasms has cleared an important early test in a project to see whether it can also cure alcoholism, French doctors said on Tuesday.

Baclofen -- the lab name for a medication branded as Kemstro, Lioresal and Gablofen -- was successful in a preliminary test among a small group of alcoholics, a result that opens the way to formal clinical trials, they said.

Researchers on Tuesday unveiled a blueprint to guide the next steps in the hunt for a more effective vaccine against tuberculosis as the world's most advanced clinical trial nears its end.

The plan is part of a global push aimed at giving TB research the same high profile -- and funding -- that goes to diseases like AIDS.

The anti-inflammatory drug ibuprofen can reduce acute altitude sickness suffered by a quarter of the millions of Americans who travel to the mountains to ski or hike, according to a clinical study published Tuesday.

Grant Lipman, the Stanford University researcher who led the study, described altitude sickness as being like "a really nasty hangover."

Drug makers AstraZeneca and Targacept say they have abandoned plans to seek regulatory approval for a drug intended to treat major depressive disorder.

AstraZeneca PLC said Tuesday that the drug TC-5214 did not perform as hoped in an eight-week trial compared to a placebo.

Six people have been arrested in a police sting in Spain and Britain, suspected of importing and selling large quantities of fake medication from Asia including Viagra, Europol said Monday.

"The members of the criminal gang were importing fake pharmaceuticals from Asia -- mainly China and Singapore -- and distributing them via the Internet to 'customers' throughout Europe," the police agency said in a statement.

A global health alliance Monday unveiled plans for the first clinical tests of a new treatment regimen for tuberculosis, including for patients with resistance to existing multidrug programs.

The TB Alliance, which is funded by several governments and foundations, said the new drug combination offers promise in the fight against TB, which kills an estimated 1.4 million people each year, mostly in Africa.

Lindsay Porter's kidneys were failing rapidly when a friend offered to donate one of his. Then she made an unusual request: Would he donate part of his immune system, too?

Every day for the rest of their lives, transplant recipients must swallow handfuls of pills to keep their bodies from rejecting a donated organ. The Chicago woman hoped to avoid those problematic drugs, enrolling in a study to try to trick her own immune system into accepting a foreign kidney.

A leading Chinese poultry company said Monday it had sacked four employees suspected of being involved in a food safety scandal that saw diseased ducks sold to unsuspecting consumers.

The case is the latest in a long list of high-profile food safety problems to hit China that have included pork deliberately laced with chemicals, dyed buns and tainted milk.