The World Health Organization on Friday warned that Europe faces an explosion of measles cases next year unless it takes urgent steps to contain the viral respiratory disease.

In the first nine months of 2011, 36 Western European nations reported a total of 26,000 measles cases, including more than 14,000 in France alone, according to the WHO's latest data.

Zara, an Afghan mother of seven, doesn't know what to tell her children when they ask about dinner.

"I simply tell them that we must wait until their father gets home to see if he's going to bring anything," she said, speaking from under a dusty blue burqa covering her from head to toe.

Users of smartphones and tablet computers are starting to get high-tech blues, as increasing numbers of the tech savvy are coming down with ailments from "text neck" to "text thumb injury".

Health experts in Britain have warned that the strain injuries stemming from long periods spent staring at small screens and tapping at tiny keys can be debilitating. And the injuries are becoming more common as high-tech gadgets grow ever more popular.

As scientists struggle to find a vaccine to prevent infection with the AIDS virus, a study in mice suggests hope for a new approach — one that scientists now want to test in people.

The treated mice in the study appeared to have 100 percent protection against HIV. That doesn't mean the strategy will work in people. But several experts were impressed.

Abnormal brain growth starting at four months of age occurs in a type of autism in which toddlers lose language and social skills they once had, according to a US study published Monday.

The brains of boys with regressive autism grew six percent larger than typically developing counterparts and toddlers who showed signs of autism early in life, a form called early onset autism.

Brazil said Monday its AIDS epidemic was under control, with a 0.61 percent cut in new cases between 2009 and 2010, although a rise among young homosexuals was a cause for concern.

"The AIDS epidemic remains stable," the health ministry said in its latest epidemiological report.

The World Health Organization warned on Saturday that only a stronger political commitment to child health could prevent a dangerous rise in mortality rates at a time of global economic turmoil.

WHO Director General Margaret Chan told the opening of a maternal and child health event in the Uzbek capital Tashkent that mortality rates had reached their lowest levels in more than a generation in the past decade.

In a major setback for AIDS prevention research, a clinical trial of a new vaginal gel supposed to reduce HIV infections has been suspended after studies showed it to be ineffective.

Researchers from the Microbicide Trials Network, set up by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), expressed surprise at the outcome as a previous study on a gel containing the drug tenofovir had shown encouraging results.

Doctors should read up on Shakespeare, according to an unusual medical study that says the Bard was exceptionally skilled at spotting psychosomatic symptoms.

Kenneth Heaton, a doctor at the University of Bristol in western England, trawled through all 42 of Shakespeare's major works and 46 genre-matched works by contemporaries.

Hi-tech medical scanners could be used to probe causes of death, reducing the need for invasive autopsies that can upset bereaved families, a study published in The Lancet on Tuesday says.

In Britain, post-mortems are ordered in about a fifth of deaths, notably where crime is suspected. The procedure has changed little over the past century, entailing evisceration and then dissection of the major organs.