Take this with a grain of salt, or perhaps some almonds or hazelnuts: A study ties chocolate consumption to the number of Nobel Prize winners a country has and suggests it's a sign that the sweet treat can boost brain power.

No, this does not appear in the satirical Onion newspaper. It's in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, which published it online Wednesday as a "note" rather than a rigorous, peer-reviewed study.

It sounds like a scene from a TV show: Someone sends a discarded coffee cup to a laboratory where the unwitting drinker's DNA is decoded, predicting what diseases lurk in his or her future.

A presidential commission found that's legally possible in about half the states — and says new protections to ensure the privacy of people's genetic information are critical if the nation is to realize the enormous medical potential of gene-mapping.

Dengue has spread in Portugal's Madeira archipelago since it appeared last week and there are now 18 confirmed cases, health officials said Wednesday.

Another 191 people are suspected of having contracted the virus which is spread by mosquito bites.

A deadly meningitis outbreak in the United States blamed on a tainted drug has triggered outrage and calls for tighter regulation of the loosely controlled pharmaceutical compounding industry.

At least a dozen people have died and the number of fungal meningitis cases rose to 138 Wednesday after a contaminated drug was shipped to clinics and hospitals in 23 states.

Canada announced Wednesday it was disbursing Can$19.4 million in aid for 14 poorer countries to treat mental health disorders.

"Mental health disorders are maybe the most neglected of neglected diseases," said Peter Singer, head of government-funded Grand Challenges Canada.

Women who start hormone replacement therapy (HRT) soon after menopause do not show higher cancer incidence within 16 years, according to a Danish study published on Tuesday that fuels scientific discord over the treatment's safety.

Indeed, women who took HRT in the investigation had a significantly lower risk of dying or developing heart problems, the researchers wrote in a paper published on the medical website bmj.com.

The U.N.'s food agency admitted Tuesday it was "losing the battle" against hunger in sub-Saharan Africa, where there are 64 million more chronically undernourished people than there were 20 years ago.

"The situation in Sub-Saharan Africa is a great cause for concern," said Jomo Sundaram, FAO assistant director-general, as the Rome-based agency warned that more needs to be done to tackle hunger in the poverty-struck region.

More than 350 million people suffer from depression globally, the World Health Organization said, ahead of World Mental Health Day on Wednesday.

"It is not a disease of developed countries, it is a global phenomenon. It's present in both genders and in rich and poor populations," Dr Shekhar Saxena, head of the WHO's mental health and substance abuse department, told reporters in Geneva.

The U.N.'s food agency revised down the number of the world's hungry on Tuesday to just under 870 million but slammed the figure as "unacceptable" and warned that the fight against hunger was slowing down.

"With almost 870 million people chronically undernourished in 2010-2012, the number of hungry people in the world remains unacceptably high," the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said in its 2012 report on food insecurity.

Eating tomatoes can dramatically reduce the risk of having a stroke, according to a new study out Monday that provided more support for diets rich in fruits and vegetables.

The key factor appears to be the powerful antioxidant lycopene, according to the Finnish study published in the Neurology journal.