Breast cancer patients taking the drug tamoxifen can cut their chances of having the disease come back or kill them if they stay on the pills for 10 years instead of five years as doctors recommend now, a major study finds.

The results could change treatment, especially for younger women. The findings are a surprise because earlier research suggested that taking the hormone-blocking drug for longer than five years didn't help and might even be harmful.

A new study sets the stage for wider use of gene testing in early pregnancy. Scanning the genes of a fetus reveals far more about potential health risks than current prenatal testing does, say researchers who compared both methods in thousands of pregnancies in the U.S.

A surprisingly high number — 6 percent — of certain fetuses declared normal by conventional testing were found to have genetic abnormalities by gene scans, the study found. The gene flaws can cause anything from minor defects such as a club foot to more serious ones such as mental retardation, heart problems and fatal diseases.

Consuming large quantities of a key ingredient in beer can protect against winter sniffles and even some serious illnesses in small children, a Japanese brewery said citing a scientific study.

A chemical compound in hops, the plant brewers use to give beer its bitter taste, provides an effective guard against a virus that can cause severe forms of pneumonia and bronchitis in youngsters, Sapporo Breweries said Wednesday.

Breast cancer patients taking the drug tamoxifen can cut their chances of having the disease come back or kill them if they stay on the pills for 10 years instead of five years as doctors recommend now, a major study finds.

The results could change treatment, especially for younger women. The findings are a surprise because earlier research suggested that taking the hormone-blocking drug for longer than five years didn't help and might even be harmful.

The world's oldest person, American Besse Cooper, died on Tuesday at the age of 116, CNN reported.

She passed away in Monroe, Georgia, east of Atlanta, her son Sidney told the television network.

The sperm count in French men dropped by nearly one-third between 1989 and 2005 and the quality of sperm also declined, a study said Wednesday.

The sperm count fell at a rate of about 1.9 percent a year, said the authors of the report covering more than 26,600 men over the 17-year period and published in the journal Human Reproduction.

An experimental breath test can diagnose colorectal cancer with an accuracy of over 75 percent, Italian researchers reported on Wednesday.

The electronic "nose" detects key molecules emitted by tumors, a technique that is also being used in pioneering diagnostics for lung and breast cancer.

For anyone who has had hyperemesis gravidarum, the pregnancy-induced vomiting that has caused Prince William's wife Kate to be hospitalized, the term "morning sickness" is way off the mark.

"When you're vomiting 30 to 40 times a day and admitted to hospital, it's a completely different complication of pregnancy," said Rachel Treagust, 28, who suffered from HG, as it is known, with all three of her children.

For Alzheimer's patients and their families, desperate for an effective treatment for the epidemic disease, there's hope from new studies starting up and insights from recent ones that didn't quite pan out.

If the new studies succeed, a medicine that slows or even stops progression of the brain-destroying disease might be ready in three to five years, said Dr. William H. Thies, chief medical officer of the Alzheimer's Association. The group assists patients and caregivers, lobbies for more research and helps fund studies.

The bacterial zoo inside your gut could look very different if you're a vegetarian or an Atkins dieter, a couch potato or an athlete, fat or thin.

Now for a fee — $69 and up — and a stool sample, the curious can find out just what's living in their intestines and take part in one of the hottest new fields in science.