A toy that allows children aged 3-6 to exercise while playing on a computer is being tipped as a Christmas bestseller. Users pedal the stationary Smart Cycle while following routes on screen. Dr Colin Waine, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, based in Nottingham, said: “Obesity in children has reached epidemic proportions . . . doctors are worried that type2 diabetes, previously associated with adults, is rising in our children. It was only a matter of time before manufacturers wove calorie burning into toys.

Mice carrying a gene which appears to make them invulnerable to cancer may hold the key to safer and more effective treatments for humans. University of Kentucky researchers said " a human cancer treatment was possible".

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History shows that medical advances are often driven by extreme circumstances such as war.

The BBC is reporting the remarkable progress and performance of the British Army's medical services in war zones.

"More British servicemen were seriously injured in Afghanistan in the first nine months of 2007 than in the whole of the rest of the present conflict.

Grim as that fact is, many of those so-called "catastrophic" wounds would have been fatal in previous wars.

Even as recently as five years ago many would not have returned home alive, the head of battlefield medicine for the armed forces says. "

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Evidence is building that the cold sore virus may be linked to Alzheimer's disease, an expert says.

In lab tests, Manchester University found brains infected with the herpes simplex virus, HSV-1, saw a rise in a protein linked to Alzheimer's.

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