A British study released Monday suggested that the risk of psychosis was five times higher for regular users of cannabis, adding to a growing body of evidence linking drug use and mental health disorders.

The six-year study published in the medical journal The Lancet reported on 780 people living in south London, 410 of whom were being treated for conditions including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Researchers said Monday they had pinpointed two compounds -- one naturally derived from fasting and intensive exercise -- that show promise for combating arthritis, multiple sclerosis, gout and other auto-immune diseases.

The compounds throw a wrench into a molecular mechanism that causes inflammation, a driver of these diseases, the teams reported in Nature Medicine.

Nine Australians have contracted hepatitis A linked with eating contaminated berries from China, with the importer apologizing Tuesday as the food scare spreads.

Manufacturer Patties Foods has recalled four products including the Nanna's and Creative Gourmet brands of mixed berries and Nanna's raspberries after infections in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales.

After a computer glitch got patched up, supporters of President Barack Obama's health care law were out in force Sunday trying to get uninsured people signed up by the official deadline for 2015 coverage.

The effort had the trappings of a get-out-the-vote drive, with email reminders, telephone calls and squads of community-level volunteers.

A scorpion stung a woman on the hand just before her flight from Los Angeles to Portland took off.

Flight 567 was taxiing on the runway Saturday night when the passenger was stung, Alaska Airlines spokesman Cole Cosgrove said. The plane returned to the gate, and the woman was checked by medics. She refused additional medical treatment, but she didn't get back on the plane.

The leaders of the countries devastated by the west African Ebola outbreak vowed at a summit in Guinea on Sunday to eradicate the virus by mid-April.

The outbreak, which began 14 months ago, has killed more than 9,200 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and savaged their economies and government finances.

A Chinese court has sentenced a health official in commercial hub Shanghai to 19 years in jail after he accepted bribes and embezzled more than 4.4 million yuan ($720,000), state media said.

The Shanghai Number One Intermediate People's Court on Sunday sentenced Huang Fengping, former deputy director for the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning, the official Xinhua news agency said.

E-cigarettes can be an effective tool for smokers aiming to kick their tobacco habit, but officials fear the devices are also creating nicotine addiction among adolescents.

"E-cigarettes show tremendous promise as a tool for helping smokers who don't respond to other approaches for quitting smoking," Wilson Compton, deputy director of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, said Friday, during a presentation with other health officials.

At age 3, Angelica Lopez is helping to break a sound barrier for deaf children.

Born without working auditory nerves, she can detect sounds for the first time — and start to mimic them — after undergoing brain surgery to implant a device that bypasses missing wiring in her inner ears.

A six-day old premature baby has become the youngest infant to receive a heart transplant at a US hospital, doctors and her proud parents said.

Baby Oliver Crawford underwent the operation at Phoenix Children's Hospital in Arizona after being born seven weeks ahead of schedule with a heart defect which meant her parents didn't expect him to survive.