Cirrhosis

Television crime shows have helped popularize autopsies, but in reality these postmortem exams are becoming rarer every year. Today, hospitals perform autopsies on only about 5 percent of patients who die, down from roughly 50 percent in the 1960s. That's...

Hey, all you mega-macchiato males. Listen up, this one's just for you. A Grande new study (make that Venti) from the National Cancer Institute says 6 or more cups of coffee each day may just save your life. Actually, the study found you jumbo-java...

Among the items sold at the literary auction at Bonhams and Butterfields on Monday was a 1961 letter from Jack Kerouac to two friends, Jacques Beckwith and Lois Sorrells. Kerouac had been typing on the page, got a letter from......

Egypt’s spiralling threat of hepatitis C virus – already the highest incidence rate in the world -- is alarming researchers who fear a potential epidemic of the blood-borne disease could spread across the most populous Arab country. The findings of......

'Mad Men' may cut six cast members. We suggest how their characters should get killed off....

Because several newspapers are reporting that Aretha Franklin has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, we at Vital Signs decided to take a closer look at this deadly disease. First, let's start with the bad news: This is one of the deadliest of cancers....

Val Lucier is a male breast cancer survivor. He considers himself lucky that he detected his cancer at Stage 3B — an advanced stage in which cancer has spread into lymph nodes, and at which a patient's chance of surviving the cancer five years...

There is some debate over how many stages there are in alcoholism, but let's go with the three major stages--early (a.k.a. adaptive), middle, and end (a.k.a. late). It's important to understand the main parts of each stage. Early Stage How does the...

Didanosine, the second drug approved for the treatment of HIV infections and one of the oldest weapons in the AIDS armamentarium, has been found to produce rare cases of potentially fatal liver disease in patients taking it for long periods,......

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is one of the many consequences of obesity, as fat accumulates not only across the body and around the visceral organs, but inside the organ that helps break down fats, filter toxins from the bloodstream and......