WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- As a general rule, men take lousy care of their health.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Adam Dougherty is laying the groundwork for a long and healthy life.

(HealthDay News) -- While fear is a normal reaction to a perceived danger, a phobia may be diagnosed when a fear is exaggerated or irrational.

(HealthDay News) -- Preventing or treating bacterial infections are what antibiotics were designed to do.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- How people fare when oral cancer recurs depends on where and when the cancer returns, a new study has found.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Delaying elective surgery after a patient is admitted to the hospital increases the risk of complications from infections and results in higher hospital costs, according to a new study.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have identified a gene mutation that may offer a target for new treatments for a type of lymphoma.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- New research suggests that many cancer cells are equipped with a kind of suicide pill: a protein on their surfaces that gives them the ability to send an "eat me" signal to immune cells.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- A gene mutation that is present in one of every four patients with glioblastoma brain cancer has been identified by researchers.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Southerners living in the area of the United States known as the "stroke belt" eat twice as much fried fish as people living in other parts of the country do, according to a new study looking at regional and ethnic eating habits for clues about the region's high stroke rate.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- A new drug, apixaban, may be better for preventing dangerous blood clots in the legs and lungs after hip replacement surgery than a commonly used older drug, a new study finds.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Confronting the "ethically questionable" practice of prescribing placebos to patients who are unaware they are taking dummy pills, researchers found that a group that was told their medication was fake still reported significant symptom relief.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists are reporting early but promising results from a new drug that blocks HIV as it attempts to invade human cells.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- People with childhood epilepsy who continue to have seizures into adolescence and beyond face a significantly higher risk of death than people who've never had epilepsy, new research suggests.

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Women who undergo in-vitro fertilization (IVF) are almost five times more likely to give birth to a single healthy baby following the implantation of a single embryo than are women who choose to have two embryos implanted at the same time, an international team of experts has found.

(HealthDay News) -- Here are the latest clinical trials, courtesy of ClinicalConnection.com:

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- President Barack Obama is expected to sign, perhaps as early as Wednesday, new legislation that gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration unprecedented powers to keep the nation's food supply safe.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of Gardasil (human papillomavirus vaccine) has been widened to include prevention of anal cancer and associated precancerous lesions, the agency said Wednesday in a news release.