The U.S. recently approved a drug that can quickly cure hepatitis C in many patients. But its high price means the treatment is out of reach for millions of people in the developing world. Now the pill's manufacturer is talking with Indian producers to reduce the treatment cost to $2,000. But critics say the price drop won't be enough.

Students at Rice University designed a low-cost medical device to help premature infants breathe. The instrument, which uses a cheap aquarium pump, boosted the survival rate of newborns with respiratory problems by 60 percent at a rural hospital in Malawi.

Cancer patients and survivors are told to exercise, but the disease and treatments can leave them with overwhelming fatigue. Yoga may be a gentle way to get moving, a study reports, with breast cancer survivors who did yoga saying they had less fatigue than women who did not.

Alarms are good and necessary things in hospital care - except when there are so many that caregivers miss signals of a patient in crisis. Trying to conquer "alarm fatigue," one hospital turned off the beeps - and found that patient care actually improved.

A poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health finds that nearly 1 in 5 Latinos say diabetes is the major health concern for themselves and their family. In East Los Angeles, where obesity and diabetes are common, community activists are committed to turning the problem around.

As many as 15 percent of babies have colic, which can cause bouts of inconsolable crying. Researchers are testing probiotics to see if these good bacteria can help. But they don't know how the supplements work, or how they may affect children's health long term.

Years of effort to wipe out the Guinea worm parasite in Africa is paying off. Last year the number of cases dropped to a record low - 148, compared to millions in the 1980s. But war is complicating the low-tech efforts needed to stop spread of the infection.

More and more women are getting diabetes while pregnant, which can be risky for both mother and child. But the condition can be successfully treated, which is why a panel that sets standards for preventive care has called for all pregnant women to be screened.

There's evidence that many standard treatments for back pain - including surgery, spinal injections and painkillers - are often ineffective and can even worsen and prolong the problem.

Scientists have engineered a natural adhesive that can patch a hole in a pig's heart. The experimental glue is nontoxic, dissolves in the body and withstands high pressure inside a beating heart. But there's still a long way to go before the superglue could replace sutures in the operating room or on the battlefield.