THURSDAY, July 29 (HealthDay News) -- Will the new health-reform legislation mean higher taxes for the middle class? Will panels decide what care very sick, older people should receive?

Not sure? Join the crowd.

A new Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll shows confusion still reigns when it comes to the health-reform bill signed into law by President...(click link above to read more)

THURSDAY, July 29 (HealthDay News) -- Children with brain injuries tend to be able to acquire the same language abilities as other children but have greater difficulty developing story-telling skills, a new study shows.

"Our findings suggest that there may be limitations to the remarkable flexibility for language functions displayed by children with brain injuries," study author and...(click link above to read more)

THURSDAY, July 29 (HealthDay News) -- Weight loss has been noted among patients who've had a knee or hip replacement, a new study says.

The research focused on 196 patients, mean age 67 years, who had knee or hip replacement surgery (arthroplasty) at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City between 2005 and 2007.

The researchers found that, after their surgery, nearly 20...(click link above to read more)

THURSDAY, July 29 (HealthDay News) -- Even in so-called "good" neighborhoods, there's a significantly increased risk of violence if teens gather with nothing to do and no adult supervision, a new study suggests.

It included 842 young people who took part in a long-term study of Chicago neighborhoods. The participants were first interviewed when they were between the ages of 8 and 13...(click link above to read more)

THURSDAY, July 29 (HealthDay News) -- Children adopted by gay or lesbian parents develop as well as those adopted by heterosexual couples, a new study has found.

Researchers looked at 106 adoptive preschool-age children living in different parts of the United States and found that all were developing well, regardless of whether their parents were gay, lesbian...(click link above to read more)

THURSDAY, July 29 (HealthDay News) -- The genetic makeup of breast cancer tumors may be a better predictor of how well a woman will fare than a tumor's size and appearance, which has been the traditional way of looking at cancers, new research suggests.

A European team of researchers analyzed the genetic makeup of 595 breast cancer tumors and compared the results to non-cancerous...(click link above to read more)

THURSDAY, July 29 (HealthDay News) -- Doctors and patients are often out of sync with each other when it comes to what patients believe about their illnesses, including to what extent the patient is to blame and what's the best way to manage the problem, new research shows.

The underlying cause of the disconnect is a lack of communication, researchers said. Patients who were "active...(click link above to read more)

THURSDAY, July 29 (HealthDay News) -- Among black teens, vitamin D deficiency is associated with arterial stiffness -- a risk factor for heart disease and stroke -- but adequate supplementation may resolve the problem, a new study has found.

Sunlight triggers the body to produce vitamin D, but nearly all of the 44 male and female black teens in the study were vitamin D deficient even...(click link above to read more)

WEDNESDAY, July 28 (HealthDay News) -- For the first time, scientists have been able to grow an entire joint from stem cells, albeit in rabbits not humans. And the joints worked.

"The rabbits were able to hop and walk and bear weight, virtually like normal rabbits," said Dr. Jeremy Mao, senior author of a paper published online July 29 in The Lancet. "This was the first...(click link above to read more)

THURSDAY, July 29 (HealthDay News) -- New research finds that two widely prescribed diabetes drugs may raise the risk of broken bones in postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes.

There was also a fracture risk seen among men who had been prescribed either Avandia or Actos plus a loop diuretic.

This isn't the first time such an association has been seen, raising doubts as to...(click link above to read more)