TUESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) -- Death rates for HIV-infected people lucky enough to get their hands on antiretroviral medications have decreased dramatically since the introduction of these drugs in 1996, new British research shows.

For most, the five-year, post-diagnosis survival for those infected sexually is now about equal to that of the general population.

Death rates were higher, however, for older individuals, for those who had been infected for a longer time, and for those who had been infected through intravenous drug use.

WASHINGTON - Remember peeking through a View-Master? Scientists are using the same concept behind the classic kids' toy to try to see mammograms in 3-D.

The goal: A better way to check for breast cancer in women with breasts too dense for today's mammograms to give a clear picture.

Radiologists donning 3-D glasses isn't the only potential aid. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., is testing a new kind of breast camera that might challenge the images of those far pricer MRI exams now reserved for the most high-risk women, but at a fraction of the price.

By Amanda Gardner
EmpowHer's HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, June 27 (HealthDay News) -- Long-anticipated results from a trial on an experimental Alzheimer's therapy look promising, at least in a certain group of patients.

Findings that are slated to be presented Sunday at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease in Chicago suggest that while the drug, bapineuzumab, showed only a modest trend towards a benefit in patients with the ApoE4 gene, there were more notable improvements in the degree of cognitive decline in individuals lacking the gene.

When we last left off, I was telling you about my latest round of thyroid woes—my numbers have been all over the chart and I’m having a really hard time regulating my levels with my current medication. Even though my medicines have been working well all along, lately they seem to have given up the proverbial ghost.

I headed back to the doctor for another round of blood work and found out in the process that my fasting blood sugar was too high, and that my physician wanted to test my pituitary gland to see if it was connected to my thyroid issues.

(HealthDay News) -- Women tend to miss almost half their menopause-related hot flashes, which are associated with memory problems, according to a University of Illinois at Chicago study that included 29 women with moderate to severe hot flashes.

The women wore monitors that measured skin changes during a hot flash. Both subjective (self-reported) and objective (detected by the monitor) hot flashes were recorded over 24 hours. The average number of objective hot flashes was 19.5 per day, about 40 percent more than were reported by the women.

FRIDAY, June 27 (HealthDay News) -- The key to a healthy mind in old age may lie in an active social life, a new study suggests.

"If you are socially engaged, you are at lower risk of dementia," said Dr. Valerie C. Crooks, a researcher at the Department of Research and Evaluation, Kaiser Permanente Southern California.

During her study, which followed more than 2,200 women ages 78 and older for four years, those with large social networks reduced their risk of getting dementia by 26 percent, she said.

THURSDAY, June 26 (HealthDay News) -- Technology may ease migraine and headache pain, two new studies suggest.

"What this tells us is that there are non-medical, non-drug treatments that are effective," said Dr. Stephen Silberstein, director of the Jefferson Headache Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, who was a co-author on both papers.

One paper found that stimulating the back of the head at the beginning of a migraine attack with a handheld magnetic device significantly reduced pain levels.

THURSDAY, June 26 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have devised a new breast-imaging technology that appears to be as accurate as MRI scans but several times cheaper.

The technique, called molecular breast imaging (MBI), is still in the early stages of development, the scientists added.

New England has the highest rate of health insurance coverage in the United States, while the Southwest has the lowest coverage, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.

Only 11 percent of non-elderly adults and 4 percent of children in New England are uninsured, compared with 30 percent of adults and 18 percent of children in the Southwest, the Associated Press reported.

THURSDAY, June 26 (HealthDay News) -- Women with metastatic breast cancer who developed an immune response to an investigational vaccine lived twice as long as those who didn't have an immune response, new research shows.

"If you were an immune responder, you had double the survival of a non-responder," said study author Dr. Susan Domchek, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.