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Staph infections didn't used to cause much of a fuss. They would irritate skin but could easily be treated with antibiotics. Recently, however, antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria such as MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus , have been surfacing. Dr. Robert Ancona, St. Joseph Medical Center's chief of pediatrics and an infectious disease specialist, have been noticing more concerning MRSA infections in children lately. What is the difference between MRSA and other bacterial strains?

African-American women in Baltimore and five other U.S. cities are becoming infected with HIV at a rate five times the national average for black women, and closer to the rates of some African countries, according to a new study. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University and around the country who made the findings suspected the rates were higher in these "hot spots" that have battled the epidemic for decades, but the numbers still came as a surprise in a field that tends to focus more on black and gay men. "This is why it's important to remind people that this is going on right here in our hometown," said Dr. Charles Flexner, the principal investigator for the Baltimore part of the study and a clinical pharmacologist and infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins.

For decades, doctors have known that leg and foot pain is often caused by spinal discs pressing on nerves that extend into the lower body. Known as sciatica - because the symptoms travel the path of the sciatic nerve - this often-debilitating ailment is common, striking as many as 4 million Americans a year. But some doctors now believe that many sciatica sufferers don't actually have back problems. Instead, their symptoms may be caused by the piriformis, a little-known muscle that extends from the hip to the bottom of the spine.

Much of the wealth of millions of baby boomers is tied up in their houses — a sure sign we're going to see a growing demand for reverse mortgages. These mortgages allow older homeowners to drain the equity in their house without having to sell it or make monthly payments. For now, though, these complex loans make up only a tiny percentage of housing loans — and that's a good thing. It gives regulators, the industry and consumer advocates time to bolster borrower protections and education before widespread problems occur.

There are more olive trees in Puglia than anywhere else in Italy. In fact, with an estimated 50 million trees growing in the Italian boot's "heel," there's nearly one for every man, woman and child living in the entire nation. Driving south along the Adriatic Sea, as I did late last fall, I saw acre after glorious acre of Pugliese olive trees, which have gnarled and windblown trunks, making sculptural shapes that are both colossal and somehow ethereal.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. asked Friday for another rate increase, three months after winning approval for higher charges, and company officials said they expect to seek more in the future. It's the third time in as many years that BGE has requested higher distribution rates. If approved, the typical residential customer getting both electricity and gas would pay about $72 more a year for distribution. Company officials said they expect to ask for frequent rate increases as they seek reimbursement for more aggressive tree-trimming, infrastructure upgrades and other work aimed at improving service.

In jaundice, the skin, whites of the eyes and mucus membranes take on a yellowish color. Jaundice itself is not an illness, but a sign of an underlying disease, says Dr. Richard Mackey, a hepatobiliary surgeon with the Cancer Institute at St. Joseph Medical Center. If you think you or someone else is showing the symptoms of jaundice, you should seek medical attention. What is jaundice? Jaundice is more a sign that something is abnormal than a disease process in itself. It's a sign of an abnormality, of an underlying disease.

Times are good these days at the Linde Corp., where despite a sluggish economy nationally, the company is on a hiring binge. The construction company, based near Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania, has seen its workforce nearly triple over the past five years as it switched from helping to build big-box stores to laying miles of natural gas pipelines connecting hundreds of gas wells drilled in the rolling rural terrain here in Susquehanna County....

Albert Lord doesn't like to wait - not in business or on the golf course. The colorful chairman of student loan behemoth Sallie Mae, who's embroiled in a nasty fight over the failed sale of the company, has spent 40 years in the accounting and banking industries. He said that experience should have instilled in him a measure of patience, but it hasn't. Whether in traffic, at the office or on the links, Lord said, he just doesn't like to wait. He can't do much about the first two, but he's got a sure-fire solution for the last one: He's building his own, an 18-hole golf course on land he's acquired amid shuttered tobacco farms and grazing horses in southern Anne Arundel County.

Troubling questions about surgeon general nominee Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr.'s knowledge of the "Tuskegee Study" have refocused public attention on one of the most infamous chapters in U.S. medical research.Over 40 years, beginning in 1932, 400 Alabama men -- all poor and black -- were denied medical treatment while the U.S. Public Health Service documented the long-term effects of syphilis. The health service told the men their syphilis was being treated but gave them placebos.During the 1960s, Dr. Foster served as professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Tuskegee Institute -- the focal point of the experiment.