The New Old Age

A Prescription for Confusion: When to Take All Those Pills

By PAULA SPAN

Complicated drug regimens cause many older patients to throw up their hands. A few simple fixes could help solve the problem, experts say.

Raw Data

In Developing World, Cancer Is a Very Different Disease

By GEORGE JOHNSON

In the West, cancer often afflicts those who are affluent and older. In poorer countries, it is not even a leading cause of death.

Big City

New York Revamps Safe Sex

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

The city will begin distributing kits that will include condoms, lubricant and a section for pills, part of a broader preventive campaign that includes billboards urging people to “Play Sure.”

Concussions Plague Women’s Hockey as Stars Are Sidelined

By SETH BERKMAN

Concussions have kept some of the best players away from the ice for extended periods as the sport struggles to combat an issue that football and men’s hockey have failed at times to properly address.

Early Detection of Ovarian Cancer May Become Possible

By DENISE GRADY

A screening test may reduce deaths from the hard-to-detect disease, but it needs more study to determine whether it holds up statistically.

Well

Love on the Hospital Walls

By MIKKAEL A. SEKERES, M.D.

I admire the creativity, the support, the love that I see on the walls of my patient’s rooms. I get to appreciate my patients from the time before they were sick, and I can also see what they are trying to return to.

Ask Well

Blood Pressure Over Age 70

By RONI CARYN RABIN

While there is debate over how aggressively high blood pressure should be treated in older patients, the definition of a healthy blood pressure does not change with age for the general population.

Well

When Runners Go the Distance, but Races Don’t

By LELA MOORE

When a race course is inadvertently shortened by a misplaced traffic cone or a confused but well-intentioned volunteer, runners are often left in the lurch.

Well

Liquor Taxes and Sexually Transmitted Infections

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

Researchers have found that an increase in liquor taxes in Maryland and a decrease in cases of a sexually transmitted disease are linked.

Curing Hepatitis C, in an Experiment the Size of Egypt

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

A new approach tested in Egypt could become the blueprint for providing cutting-edge medicines to the poor.

Phys Ed

How Exercise May Help Us Fight Off Colds

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

Working out could help us fight off colds and other infections, a new study suggests, providing more incentive to exercise as the temperatures drop.

Well

After Shingles, Higher Risk of Heart Attack or Stroke

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

Researchers found that in the weeks after a herpes zoster diagnosis, patients were more susceptible to cardiovascular events.

Beijing Issues a Second ‘Red Alert’ on Pollution

By EDWARD WONG

The crisis measures were expected to start Saturday and last for four days. The Chinese capital issued its first top-level air pollution alert last week.

New York City’s Flu Shot Mandate for Young Children Is Struck Down

By MARC SANTORA

A state judge said the rule requiring vaccination against the disease for anyone to attend a city-licensed preschool or day care center was invalid without action by the Legislature.

Shkreli Indictment Portrays Small-Time Fraud

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD and MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN

The latest uproar around Martin Shkreli has nothing to do with drug prices, but allegations of fraud at a small hedge fund.

News Analysis

Martin Shkreli’s Arrest Gives Drug Makers Cover

By ANDREW POLLACK

Pharmaceutical executives can look at the federal indictment and say that Martin Shkreli is an aberration, a rotten apple, but his arrest is not likely to make concern about drug prices go away.

New York Prisons Take an Unsavory Punishment Off the Table

By JESSE McKINLEY

The discontinuation of Nutraloaf, an unappetizing brick of dissimilar ingredients given to inmates in solitary confinement, is a symbolic victory for those seeking more humane treatment for prisoners.

Kaiser Permanente Plans to Open a Medical School

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

The system’s leaders said their central goal was to teach Kaiser’s model of integrated care to a new generation of doctors.

Where to Run (and Exercise) in London

By GABRIELLA BOSTON

Tips for running, spinning and yoga in this city of crowded, narrow sidewalks but a wealth of dramatic views.

F.D.A. Allows Maker of Just Mayo to Keep Product’s Name

By STEPHANIE STROM

Federal standards require that any product called mayonnaise contain eggs, which Just Mayo does not. Now, the F.D.A. has decided that Hampton Creek can keep the Just Mayo name and its logo, as long as it alters its label.

In Likely Spending Plan, Congress Readies Blows to Obama’s Health Care Law

By ROBERT PEAR

Republicans have forced President Obama to swallow three changes that undermine his signature health care law, including a two-year delay of a tax on high-cost insurance plans provided by employers to workers.

Yoga Teachers Behaving Badly

By HANNAH SELIGSON

A fictional web series is filled (somewhat impolitely) with story lines that include sex, drugs and downward dogs.