The American Medical Association voted Tuesday to declare obesity a disease, a move that effectively defines 78 million American adults and 12 million children as having a medical condition requiring treatment.

The Department of Health (DOH) yesterday said the recent examination results on polystyrene (PS), one of the most widely used plastics for such protective packaging as lids and bottles, were “okay,” noting that Taiwan, Europe, the U.S. and Japan do not ban PS dining utensils.

Governments worldwide must ban all forms of tobacco marketing, not just billboards and TV ads, as companies find new ways to tap the market, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

Four separate teams of scientists have said they were unable to replicate a highly publicized study that last year touted a cancer drug's success against Alzheimer's disease in mice.

According to the World Health Organization, about 1.4 billion of all the world's 20-year-old and older adults are overweight, and of these overweight people, 200 million men and 300 million women are classified as obese.

After running medical tests in four hospitals and talking to nine doctors in five years, a female pediatric doctor surnamed Yu has finally been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, also known as “Princess and the Pea syndrome.”

Taiwan's Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta arrived in Geneva Saturday to attend this year's World Health Assembly (WHA), the decision-making arm of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Europe's medicines watchdog said Friday the benefits of acne drug Diane-35, also widely used as a contraceptive, outweigh the risk of developing blood clots in the veins — when correctly prescribed.

Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (CGMH) and U.S.-based Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for jointly setting up a clinical research center.

Eating fish is good for your heart, but taking fish oil capsules does not help people at high risk of heart problems who are already taking medicines to prevent them, a large study in Italy found.