VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Systemic therapies for metastatic breast cancer introduced over the last decade do appear to have improved survival, according to the first population-based study to support this long-suspected benefit.

WASHINGTON -- The White House said today that pathology on five adenomatous polyps discovered during a colonoscopy performed on President Bush over the weekend were all benign.

HAMILTON, Ontario -- Patients are more likely to develop venous thromboembolism after hospital discharge than during their stay, and most get no prophylactic treatment.

NOTTINGHAM, England -- In many young children with intracranial ependymoma, primary chemotherapy can delay or avoid radiotherapy without compromising survival, according to investigators here.

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Based on botulism toxin tests at an Augusta, Ga., food processing plant, the FDA has expanded its warning about chili dog sauce to include 10 canned sauces and four pet food products.

BOSTON -- Obesity's link to multiple myeloma has received new corroboration from an analysis of data from two large studies of health care professionals.

NEW YORK -- Children who take methylphenidate (Ritalin) throughout childhood may undergo behavior-modifying brain changes that carry into adulthood, or so investigators found in rats.

NEW YORK -- In the year after New York's statewide ban on indoor smoking, saliva levels of cotinine, a marker of exposure to tobacco smoke, decreased by 47.4% among nonsmokers.

GATESHEAD, England -- Playing soothing music during a colposcopy or allowing the patient to view the procedure on a television monitor were effective anxiety-reducing interventions, according to a review of 11 clinical trials.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- The proliferation of office-based point-of-care testing for glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) makes home monitoring for diabetes patients seem a natural next step, but doubts have risen about its accuracy.

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The FDA has warned consumers not to eat canned hot dog chili sauce marketed under several brand names following reports of four cases of botulism poisoning linked to the sauce.

ROTTERDAM -- Infants with acute lymphoblastic leukemia had improved event-free survival with a hybrid protocol that combined elements of acute myeloid leukemia therapy, investigators here found.

BOSTON -- Simvastatin (Zocor) may enrich the brain as well as help sustain the heart, according to researchers here.

CHICAGO -- Even when semen measurements are normal in cases of unexplained infertility, the use of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is increasingly common, investigators here reported.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- It may be possible to determine whether non-small cell lung cancer is responding to radiation therapy before the course of treatment is over, a small study evaluating the predictive value of PET imaging suggests.

HELSINKI, Finland -- Although most people won't find vitamin C effective protection against colds, marathon runners can cut their risk by about 50% if they take at least 200 mg every day.

CAMBRIDGE, England -- A new picture of age-related macular degeneration has emerged from studies here that found a gene for part of the immune system is significantly associated with the disease.

REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- A major symptom of restless legs syndrome has been associated with a genetic variation on chromosome six, two research groups reported.

LEICESTER, England, July 18 -- An increased risk of coronary artery disease has been linked -- for the third time in as many months -- to a region on chromosome nine.

NEW YORK -- The radiation dose from computed tomography (CT) coronary angiography carries a "nonnegligible" cancer risk that varies widely with age, gender, and scan protocol, researchers said.