THURSDAY, July 17 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. health officials on Thursday dropped their warning against eating fresh tomatoes, as the toll in the ongoing salmonella outbreak reached 1,220 confirmed cases, with at least 242 people hospitalized.

"As of today, FDA officials believe that consumers may now enjoy all types of fresh tomatoes available on the domestic market without concern about becoming infected with Salmonella saintpaul bacteria," Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said during a Thursday afternoon teleconference.

THURSDAY, July 17 (HealthDay News) -- Sleeping either too much or too little appears to heighten the risk of stroke, a new study finds.

And while the researchers said their findings can be applied only to the postmenopausal women in the study, other experts said the same relationship between sleep and stroke risk seems to be universal.

The study of more than 93,000 women found that those who regularly slept more than nine hours a night had a 60 percent to 70 percent higher risk of stroke than women sleeping seven hours.

THURSDAY, July 17 (HealthDay News) -- Despite wide-ranging efforts to encourage Americans to lose weight, the number of U.S. adults who are obese increased almost 2 percent between 2005 and 2007, a new report found.

In 2007, 25.6 percent of adults reported being obese, compared to 23.9 percent in 2005, according to the finding in the July 18 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

THURSDAY, July 17 (HealthDay News) -- New research shows that some parents of autistic children appear to be "socially aloof," providing more evidence that some aspects of autism are hereditary.

THURSDAY, July 17 (HealthDay News) -- Community-based health programs aimed at diet, exercise, smoking prevention and other known risk factors for chronic diseases could cut health-care costs in the United States by $16 billion a year, a new report says.

"We worked with economists at the Urban Institute who looked at health-care costs associated with these chronic diseases," said Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Washington-based Trust for America's Health, which issued the report. "They estimated a 5 percent reduction in these chronic diseases to derive these savings."

WEDNESDAY, July 16 (HealthDay News) -- New research suggests that people of African descent are much more likely to have a genetic trait that makes them more susceptible to infection with the HIV virus.

Scientists estimate that the trait -- which also provides protection against a form of malaria -- might account for 11 percent of the HIV cases in Africa, the continent hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic.

WEDNESDAY, July 16 (HealthDay News) -- In a feat that should help researchers more effectively evaluate new treatments for hepatitis C, investigators report that they have developed the first tissue culture of regular human liver cells that can imitate infections with the hepatitis C virus (HCV).

NEW YORK - Grammy-winning singer Natalie Cole has been diagnosed with hepatitis C, her publicist said in a statement Wednesday.

Hepatitis C is a liver disease spread through contact with infected blood. The statement said the disease was revealed during a routine examination and was likely caused by her drug use years ago.

Read full story

NEW YORK - Grammy-winning singer Natalie Cole has been diagnosed with hepatitis C, her publicist said in a statement Wednesday.

Hepatitis C is a liver disease spread through contact with infected blood. The statement said the disease was revealed during a routine examination and was likely caused by her drug use years ago.

Read full story

WEDNESDAY, July 16 (HealthDay News) -- Nearly one in three Americans suffers from high blood pressure -- more than 73 million adults.

But half of them -- women -- face unique challenges in controlling their blood pressure.

For instance, women with high blood pressure are more likely to be obese and have high cholesterol levels. They're also less likely than men to meet target goals for their blood pressure. And they're also less likely than men to receive medications such as aspirin, blood pressure-lowering drugs or cholesterol-lowering drugs, compared to men, recent research found.