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Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Flu Starts to Wane in Hard-Hit Colorado

Flu-battered Coloradans have gotten some good news -- the outbreak of the bug has apparently peaked and is starting to ease, state health officials said.

"It appears that the increase in the number of flu cases peaked during the first week of December," Douglas Benevento, executive director of the state health department, said Monday. "Colorado should continue to register weekly decreases."

The flu has killed at least 11 children and one adult in the state this season. Last year, only two deaths of children were attributed to the flu, the Associated Press reports.

The total number of flu cases in Colorado had reached 10,707 as of Monday, compared with 8,967 cases in the past four flu seasons combined, the AP says.

Flu has been reported in 36 states, prompting federal officials on Dec. 19 to label this year's outbreak an "epidemic."

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Powell Expected to Make Full Recovery

Medical tests show Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's cancer did not spread beyond his prostate, a senior State Department official said Monday, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Powell, 66, is recovering at home after the successful prostate cancer surgery last week. He is expected to make a full recovery, the official said.

About 190,000 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed in the United States every year, and about 30,000 victims died in 2002, according to American Cancer Society statistics. The disease affects mostly older men, and has a relatively good survival rate depending on how early it's detected.

African-American men are more likely to have prostate cancer and to die of it than are white or Asian men. The reasons for this are still not known, the cancer society says.

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Judge Bars Pentagon From Forcing Anthrax Shots

The Pentagon cannot force U.S. service members to get the vaccination for anthrax against their wishes -- at least not without a signed order from President Bush, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Millions of inoculations have been given to soldiers destined for the Persian Gulf and other high-risk places, and hundreds of service members have been penalized for not taking the vaccinations since they were imposed starting in 1998, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that the anthrax shots fell under a 1998 law that forbids experimental drugs to be imposed without a person's consent, or without a presidential waiver, the AP says.

There was no immediate comment from the White House or Pentagon.

Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, said he will ask the Defense Department to review the disciplinary actions taken against service personnel who refused the vaccines, the news service says.

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D.C. Mail Facility Reopens 2 Years After Anthrax Scare

More than two years after it was closed in October 2001 by incoming mail laced with deadly anthrax spores, Washington, DC's central mail facility reopened Monday to the public.

Formerly known as the Brentwood Road NE facility, it has a new name: The Joseph Curseen Jr. and Thomas Morris Jr. Processing and Distribution Center -- in memory of the two mail workers who died from exposure to anthrax-laced letters that were destined for Capitol Hill, the Washington Post reports.

"We will never forget," declares a bronze plaque that adorns the entrance in honor of Curseen, 47, and Morris, 55.

The facility's reopening follows a two-year, $130 million decontamination effort. It's expected to be fully staffed, with 1,700 workers, by the end of next month, the Post reports.

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Illinois Gov. Makes Formal Request to Buy Canadian Drugs

Back in September, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich became the nation's first governor to announce that he wanted to allow state employees and retirees to buy less expensive prescription drugs from Canada, saving the state a projected $91 million, he said at the time.

Now Blagojevich appears to be making good on his pledge. He sent a letter Monday to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson to formally request that Thompson allow the state to buy its drugs this way, under what the governor calls a pilot program linked to the just-passed Medicare bill, the Associated Press reports.

That bill grants Thompson the power to tell Congress that drug importation from Canada wouldn't pose a threat to the public's safety. But Thompson and his predecessor under President Clinton, Donna Shalala, have had that ability under prior legislation and have repeatedly refused to issue such an edict, an HHS spokesman told the AP.

A U.S. Food and Drug Administration official told the Chicago Sun-Times on Monday that Blagojevich was wrong in his interpretation of the new Medicare drug law wrong if he thought it provided for pilot programs to see if drugs could be imported safely.

"Just because some elected officials say that language exists does not make that true, just as having elected officials saying certain kinds of drugs are safe does not make that true,'' Peter Pitts, the FDA's associate commissioner for external relations, told the newspaper.

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Study: Introverted Men Have Less AIDS Resistance

Shy, introverted people have much lower resistance to the AIDS virus than outgoing men and are much less likely to benefit from treatment, a new study concludes.

HIV-infected men who were reserved and kept to themselves had nearly eight times the viral load in their blood as outgoing men, according to researchers at the AIDS Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

In addition, after 18 months of treatment, the extroverted group saw a 162-fold drop in its average viral load, compared with only a 20-fold drop among the shy men, the Washington Post reports of the study.

Lead researcher Steve Cole says introverts tend to be more stressed, causing an accelerated heart rate and other physiological changes. This tends to weaken their resistance to infection.

Previous studies have shown that AIDS progresses faster among gay men who were "in the closet," as opposed to those who had come "out," the newspaper reports.

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