After collapsing in her London home last week, singer Amy Winehouse has been resting and undergoing tests in a London hospital. After a short-lived TB scare, doctors finally pinpointed her condition. She's been diagnosed with emphysema, in the very early stages. Emphysema is a lung condition that creates breathlessness and reduces a person's ability to be physically active.

Though there's no cure for emphysema, Winehouse's condition will likely be controlled by a smoking cessation program (smoking the main risk factor for emphysema), lung rehabilitation, and medications. The damage caused by emphysema is irreversible, but Winehouse's publicist insists she's in the earliest stage of the disease.

According to her father, Winehouse is eager to began rebuilding her health and has been following doctor's orders to the letter. Whether she's able to continue touring or not will depend on whether those doctors feel like she's up to the task.

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As you may already know (and probably not care about), drug-addicted singer Amy Winehouse was recently hospitalized after a fainting spell. The singer was tested for tuberculosis, which sparked a great many rumors, but in the end, that test has reportedly come back negative.

However, the fact of the matter is that drug-resistant TB is on the rise in Britain, and people with reduced immune systems, including those who are drug addicts, alcoholics, or lacking nutrition are more likely to contract the deadly disease. And, of course that means that someone like Winehouse would be fairly susceptible.

Friends and family of the singer hope that this serves as a wake-up call for the 24-year-old. She has several appearances scheduled for the summer, which she hopes to be able to attend, but a mouthpiece says she'll listen to her doctors' orders. You know, because she's listened so well to medical advice before now ...

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The year 2007 is coming to a close and it's time for the year-end wrap ups. There were a lot of important health stories in 2007 -- MRSA, food recalls, toy recalls, etc -- and now seems like the perfect time to find out which ones made the biggest impact. CNN recently listed their top health stories of 2007. Here's their list, along with our take on the same topics:

• Governor Rick Perry mandates HPV vaccine for girls and raises a ruckus in Texas.
• Walter Reed Army Medical Center comes under scrutiny after poor conditions are reported.
• Cats and dogs are killed by contaminated pet food manufactured in China. Several food and toy recalls follow.
• A patient with drug resistant TB leaves the country, then returns, risking the infection of fellow airline passengers and drawing attention to this rare disease.
• Performance-enhancing drugs make major headlines. Marion Jones is stripped of her Olympic medal.
• About 21.7 pounds of ground beef were recalled due to fear of E. coli contamination. Other food recalls follow.
• FDA experts recommend that cold medication not be given to young children.
• MRSA -- a drug resistant staph infection -- gets attention when it's learned that the infection is killing more Americans each year than AIDS.
• Avandia gets a black box warning that it may be associated with heart attacks.
• A stem cell breakthrough comes when scientists reprogram skin cells to perform like stem cells.

What about you? What was your favorite health story of the year?

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By Friday of last week, 49 patients of Jose Pearson hospital in South Africa escaped medical confinement to spend Christmas with their families. But the problem is that these patients have extremely drug resistant tuberculosis, and had been kept in captivity for the "public good."

Twenty-six individuals returned to the hospital on their own steam, probably knowing the danger they were putting their families in. Authorities are about to conduct door-to-door searches in order to round up the remaining 23 at large. Tensions were building as the patients complained about wanting to see their family for this time of year. Holding someone this way flies in the face of most ethical practices, but provinces have had to take legal action to force them into confinement.

Those people who were less infectious got to spend some of the holiday at home, but only under strict supervision. The others were not so lucky. It must be hard to cope with such a condition, being kept like a prisoner in a hospital. Was the government right for holding these people against their will? Or was it a necessary action for the public good? Let's just hope things get resolved quickly and safely without much confrontation.

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It's amazing the amount of passengers on airlines these days. Even though we're more connected than ever, business airline travel has never been more fruitful and consumers are apparently flying more than ever (for vacations, I suppose?).

In 2006, there were an estimated 2.1 billion airline passengers flying around the planet. Can you imagine the amount of airborne ailments accompanying some of those passengers? The World Health Organization (WHO) can certainly imagine it.

The WHO said that infectious diseases are spreading faster than ever before, most likely due to the sheer amount of people in planes who are indirectly contacting all those other passengers in an endless chain reaction. Want proof? When the WHO Director-General states that "new diseases are emerging at the historically unprecedented rate of one per year," that is pretty serious, folks. Will you wear a gas mask on your next flight?

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Do your nails look a little worse for wear? They may need more than a manicure. Your fingernails and toenails can actually be a window into your internal health and various problems you may be having with them may be a sign that something more serious than ragged cuticles is going on. If your nails:

• are shaped like spoons, it can be sign of anemia.
• are pitted, it may be a symptom of psoriasis or alopecia.
• are yellow or orange, it could be a sign of sinus infection or lung disease.
• show signs of clubbing, it could be due to lung or cardiac problems including cystic fibrosis or TB.
• are uniformly white, except for a band at the top, it could indicate liver cirrhosis, congestive heart failure, or diabetes.

Before you cover up those unsightly nail imperfections with the perfect polish, make sure they aren't giving you a sign that you need to make a visit to your doctor first!

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Normally linked to a variety of health problems such as hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular, obesity may actually be helpful in preventing tuberculosis amongst the elderly.

That's according to a recent study in Hong Kong, that elderly, obese people are, on average, better-protected against the disease than people who are underweight or of normal weight -- the heavier you are, the lower your risk.

There's no conclusive evidence as to why obese people fair better against the disease, so further research is needed. However, doctors theorize that the connection is due to the fact that our fatty tissues control both our metabolism and our immune systems.

Oddly, this is thought to be the reason that the numbers of people catching TB started to fall before there was a cure. As the populations of certain countries starting getting fatter, less people contracted the disease.

That said, in the long run, your chances of dying from an obesity-related condition are far higher than your chances of contracting and dying from TB. So take the weight off -- it's worth the risk.

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I can't imagine what it must be like to have been one of the passengers sitting near Andrew Speaker on one of his trans-Atlantic flights, worrying that you've been exposed to an extremely drug-resistant form of TB. Hopefully, no one was infected by his escapade, but the case has brought TB back into the public spotlight. For the general public, the disease is of low concern, because it has a low incidence rate in the U.S. and is typically curable. But as the Speaker incident showed us, not only are there are more serious forms of the disease, but TB isn't as rare as you might think.

Want to know more about TB and Andrew Speaker's situation? WebMD has an informative article that'll get your questions answered.

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In a locked down room in an Arizona hospital sits a man who's been imprisoned for nearly a year, and his sentence is indefinite...though he's not a criminal. His "crime" is having an extremely drug-resistant variety of tuberculosis, and his condition is considered untreatable. Officials got a court order to quarantine him last year after he failed to follow doctor's orders and wear a mask in public to prevent spreading the disease.

Beyond getting a TB test before being hired at certain jobs, I don't think many of us worry about TB these days. That's probably because TB is treatable, and rates of infection in the United States are at their lowest. But this new, resistant TB is showing up all over the world, and the WHO warns that in our globalized culture, viruses are only a plane ride away. Several states, including Texas, California, and New York reported detaining TB patients involuntarily last year. The practice is rare, and typically only happens when patients refuse to follow doctor's guidelines for preventing infection.

Health experts warn that if patients do not comply, the new strain of TB could spread and turn a completely treatable disease to an incurable one. Others in the medical community criticize the practice of detention for placing blame on the victim of the disease and say it should always be a last resort. What's your opinion of this practice -- necessary to protect public health, or a violation of civil liberties for those involved?

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Okay, if you've got a running list, get it out and add this to your reasons to quit smoking: smoking has been linked to an increased risk for catching and developing tuberculosis.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, compiled data from 24 previous studies on the subject and came up with some scary numbers. Smokers are 73% more likely to become infected with TB when exposed, and then more than twice as likely to develop the active form of the disease.

TB is no laughing matter (not to say that lung cancer or emphysema are either), but now that smoking has been pinpointed as a risk factor education and policies can be modified to hopefully help with prevention.

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Coughs happen to everybody, all the time. With colds and viruses being passed around everyday, everywhere we go, how do you know when you might have something serious?

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, there are several symptoms to watch for regarding a suspicious cough: it has lasted for more than three weeks, it includes green or yellow phlegm (or blood of course), or it comes with a fever or night sweats, wheezing when you breathe, or unexpected weight loss. Seek medical help as soon as possible if you're at all unsure -- most of us can tell if it's just a scratchy throat vs something more serious, but you should never take chances with your health.

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