Boys should get routinely vaccinated against human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease that can lead to cancer, a U.S. government advisory panel recommended on Tuesday.

All boys aged 11-12 should get the HPV vaccine, which is already approved for use in girls, said the recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

More evidence that coffee, particularly among female drinkers, has a positive effect against the most common form of skin cancer worldwide was released Monday at a major US medical conference.

Women who drank more than three cups per day of caffeinated coffee saw a 20 percent lower risk of getting basal cell carcinoma(BCC), a slow-growing form of cancer, than those who drank less than a cup per month.

Researchers in the United States said on Tuesday they had found a "shocking" association -- if only a statistical one -- between violence by teenagers and the amount of soda they drank.

High-school students in inner-city Boston who consumed more than five cans of non-diet, fizzy soft drinks every week were between nine and 15-percent likelier to engage in an aggressive act compared with counterparts who drank less.

As if you didn't have enough to worry about during those sleepless nights, a Norwegian study out Monday suggests that people with insomnia face a 27 to 45 percent higher risk of heart attack.

The largest study of its kind found no link between long-term use of mobile phones and increased risk of brain tumors, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) reported on Friday.

Danish researchers found no evidence of enhanced risk among more than 350,000 mobile-phone subscribers whose health was monitored over 18 years.

Women are more likely to sustain injuries in an auto accident because safety features are designed more with men in mind, a study said Thursday.

Combing through a decade of data about US motor vehicle accidents, three researchers found the odds of serious injury for female drivers wearing seat belts were 47 percent higher than those of men in a comparable mishap.

U.S. researchers have uncovered the genetic mechanism that bed bugs use to resist powerful insecticides, according to a study, leading to the hope of more effective ways to combat the pests.

Bed bugs, which have been largely absent from the United States since the 1950s, have returned in force in the last decade in the U.S., and notably other Western countries in Europe.

A human antibody has been shown to protect lab monkeys from a deadly bat-borne virus that has killed several people and dozens of horses since it was discovered in Australia in 1994, U.S. scientists said Wednesday.

The latest outbreak of Hendra virus has killed 20 horses in New South Wales and Queensland since June, but no humans. However four of the seven people ever to have contracted the disease have died.

The search for the world's first malaria vaccine received a boost with the release of early results from a major clinical trial showing it cut risk by about half in African children.

The vaccine known as RTS,S is made by the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline's lab in Belgium, and is the first of its kind to attempt to block a parasite, rather than bacteria or viruses.

The humble potato is at the center of a political food fight in Washington over what American children should be eating in their school cafeterias.

Opening a new front in its war on obesity, the U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to limit servings of "starchy vegetables" to no more than twice a week under a federally subsidized school lunch program.