The number of polio cases worldwide reached a record low in 2012, giving experts confidence that the disease can finally be eradicated, according to presentations made Tuesday at a major U.S. conference.

Just 177 cases were recorded globally through October 2012, down from 502 during the same period last year, said virologists attending the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Atlanta.

Women suffering from migraines are more likely to experience changes to their brain tissue, though these do not appear to cause long-term damage to their mental condition, a study said Tuesday.

The study of 286 women and men, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that women with migraines were more likely to have brain changes that appeared as bright spots on magnetic resonance imaging.

A German court on Tuesday began hearing the country's first lawsuit over a health scandal surrounding French-made breast implants found to leak silicone into women's bodies.

The regional court in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe opened the case brought by a 40-year-old woman who opted for the implants from French manufacturer Poly Implant Prothese or PIP in 2007 after three pregnancies.

Several Greek hospitals and one of the country's main universities have suffered an Internet blackout after students shut down a central server to thwart board elections, an official said on Tuesday.

Athanassios Dimopoulos, head of the Athens Medical School, said the blackout had disrupted operations in at least four Athens hospitals and had completely crippled electronic communications at Athens University.

More than 3.5 million people in Sudan's conflict-plagued Darfur region will be vaccinated against yellow fever which is suspected of killing nearly 100 people in the past seven weeks, officials said.

"(The) vaccination plan has been finalized and will cover vaccination of approximately 3.6 million," said a joint report from the U.N.'s World Health Organization and Sudan's health ministry, issued late Monday.

Women who had the flu or ran a fever for more than a week during their pregnancy face a greater risk of having a child with an autism spectrum disorder, Danish researchers said Monday.

The study was based on a survey of mothers of nearly 97,000 children aged eight to 14 and born between 1997 and 2003 in Denmark. Only one percent (976) of the children were diagnosed with autism.

Malaysia'a official Palm Oil Council on Monday slammed as "irresponsible" and "badly informed" a French senator's call to slap a 300-percent tax increase on palm oil, known in France as a "Nutella tax" after a popular brand of spread.

"The proposal is based on inaccurate claims that palm oil is bad for health and nutrition, and that Malaysia does not respect the environment," the council said in a statement received here.

The group Doctors Without Borders has aided victims of war and disease in countries like Sudan, Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Now, they are on their first mission in the United States -- helping victims of Sandy, the megastorm that brought historic destruction to the New York metropolitan area.

Twenty percent of young people born with HIV in the United States don't know they're infected when they have sex for the first time, according to a new study released Friday.

The study, which appeared in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal, also found that most of the juveniles who were aware of their status said they did not tell their partners before becoming intimate.

About $38 million dollars (30 million euros) is needed to help over two million people made homeless by deadly floods that have ravaged Nigeria since July, the U.N. humanitarian agency said Friday.

"The humanitarian community in Nigeria has presented a response plan for $38 million to respond to the humanitarian needs after the severe flooding in Nigeria in recent weeks," OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva.