Germany recorded its highest number of births last year in more than a decade, an encouraging sign for a country facing a demographic crisis.

Official figures released Friday show Germany had 715,000 births in 2014. That's the most since 2002, when 719,000 babies were born in Germany.

For the first time, there's evidence that a diabetes medication, Jardiance, reduces risk of the complications that are the top killer of diabetics: heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular damage.

Preventing those is a long-elusive goal for the millions of diabetes patients and their doctors, and one analyst who's also a trained physician even called Thursday's news of a possible groundbreaking advance a "holy grail."

New research shows that chances of dying from very early breast cancer are small but the disease is riskier for young women and blacks, the same disparities seen for more advanced cancer.

Death rates in the 20 years after diagnosis totaled about 3 percent for women whose breast cancer was confined to a milk duct. The death rates were twice as high for those younger than 35 at diagnosis and in blacks — but still lower than those with more common invasive breast cancer.

The occurrence of dementia and Alzheimer's disease may have stabilized in some wealthy nations, according to a study released Friday.

A review of data from Sweden, the Netherlands, Britain and Spain showed the percentage of the population with dementia -- the umbrella term for neurodegenerative diseases of the brain -- holding steady, along with the number of new cases, said the study, published in The Lancet Neurology.

MERS coronavirus infections have soared in Saudi Arabia ahead of the hajj pilgrimage, forcing the closure of a major hospital's emergency ward in Riyadh and killing three people, officials and the press said.

The Saudi Gazette said Thursday authorities shut the emergency ward at the King Abdulaziz Medical City, one of the capital's largest hospitals, "after at least 46 people, including hospital staff" contracted the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

An experimental vaccine against the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, or MERS, has shown promise when tested on lab monkeys, researchers said Wednesday.

There are no approved vaccines against MERS, which is believed to originate in camels and began to sicken people in 2012, killing hundreds since then. Infections have mainly been seen in the Middle East, South Korea, Europe and the United States.

A second tourist who visited Yosemite National Park has likely contracted the plague, Californian authorities said.

The unnamed individual, from the southern U.S. state of Georgia, had vacationed in Yosemite, the Sierra National Forest and surrounding areas in California early this month.

Scientists have identified a genetic master-switch that makes some people more prone to obesity than others, and research out Wednesday suggests it can be turned off, possibly leading to weight loss.

So far, researchers have been able to manipulate the genes of mice and human cells in the lab in order to reverse obesity, but the approach has not yet been tested in people.

Working 55 hours or more per week is linked to a one third greater risk of stroke compared to a 35-40 hour work week, according to research published Thursday.

Based on a review of 17 studies covering 528,908 men and women followed for an average of 7.2 years, the increased stroke risk remained once smoking, alcohol consumption and level of physical activity were taken into account.

E-cigarettes should be prescribed to smokers to help them quit the habit, British public health experts recommended in a study on Wednesday.

The study commissioned by health authority Public Health England (PHE) found that so-called "vaping" electronic cigarettes was 95 percent less dangerous than smoking traditional tobacco cigarettes.