We hear a lot about the hazards of drunk driving, but here's something else to put on your radar: A study in the British Medical Journal found that marijuana nearly doubles the risk of vehicle collisions.

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Rave-goers and visitors to Amsterdam before December 2008 may be intimately familiar with magic mushrooms, but there's little scientific knowledge on what happens to the brain while tripping.

Now it appears that more research is warranted. A growing number of studies suggested that perhaps the mushrooms' key ingredient could work magic for certain mental disorders.

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The ache, the hurt, the burn, the stab. We use all kinds of words to describe pain, but the truth is that there’s no way to know if what you experience as pain differs from anyone else’s – it’s a matter of individual perception.

Scientists are honing in on a disparity between men and women that may exist in that perception. In the largest study of its kind, Stanford researchers analyzed electronic medical records for ratings of pain, and found that women tend to report greater amounts of pain in a variety of diagnoses. They report their results in Monday in the Journal of Pain.

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"Did you hear what she did?" "Guess what I just found out about our new co-worker!" These could be the starts of nasty rumors, but a new study suggests the act of gossiping can also serve important purposes in maintaining social order.

Researchers report their findings in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Gossip gets a bad rap," said Robb Willer, social psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. "Much of what we call gossip is driven by a sincere desire to help others."
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If you like to drink but want to stop and don't seem to have to willpower to do so, it may be because chemicals in your brain are telling you to order another pint, new research suggests.

It's been long thought that alcohol triggers the release of naturally occurring opioids in the brain's reward centers, but research has documented how this process works only in animals. A new study in the journal Science Translational Medicine offers insights into why alcohol can be so addictive in humans.

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It's hard to escape the warnings of the dangers of smoking, but one component of cigarettes - nicotine - might actually have a therapeutic use, preliminary research suggests.

A small study, published Monday in the journal Neurology, finds that using a nicotine patch may help symptoms of mild cognitive impairment, a condition characterized by a noticeable memory problem.  Many, but not all, patients with mild cognitive impairment will go on to develop Alzheimer's disease; scientists are still working on predicting who is most at risk.

A nicotine patch releases nicotine slowly over a number of hours. It gets into the blood stream, travels to the brain and interacts with receptors on nerve cells. In particular, it seems to activate receptors on nerve cells important for a circuit involved in attention, learning and memory.

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A doctor whose research on autism has been discredited by many medical authorities is launching a lawsuit against the British Medical Journal, as well as a freelance journalist and one of the journal's editors.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield is the author of a controversial 1998 autism study and has linked the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to causing autism. In his lawsuit, he alleges that the British Medical Journal (BMJ), and specifically writer Brian Deer and editor Dr. Fiona Godlee, defamed him. They have made "unfair, incorrect, inaccurate and unjust criticisms of findings previously reported by Dr. Wakefield and 12 other co-authors," a petition filed in Travis County, Texas, states.

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A new report from the American Cancer Society shows that death rates from cancer have been going down since 1999, with the risk of death from cancer declining by more than 1% in both men and women. About 1 million deaths from cancer have been avoided since around 1991.

That sounds promising, but it's not as good as it could be, says Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society and CNNHealth.com conditions expert.

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Scientists are finding more clues to help determine whether people with mild dementia symptoms are at risk for Alzheimer's.

A new study suggests that biomarkers found in cerebrospinal fluid (fluid that surrounds the spinal cord and brain and acts as a protective cushion) could predict who would develop Alzheimer's disease 90% of the time among patients with mild cognitive impairment, a condition characterized by measurable memory problems.

Researchers report these findings in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

This is the longest clinical follow-up ever of patients who begin with mild cognitive impairment, researchers reported. Patients were tracked from four to 12 years, with a median of 9.2 years.  The research builds on a 2006 Lancet Neurology study that followed patients for a median of 5.2 years, beginning with a group of 137 volunteers with mild cognitive impairment. FULL POST

In a 21 to 5 vote on Thursday, U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisers said that the labels on certain oral contraceptives do not adequately reflect the risk-benefit profile of these drugs.

The pills in question contain the hormone drospirenone. The brand names for these products include Yaz, Yasmin, Beyaz and Sayfral.

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