By Chelsea Conaboy and Amanda Cedrone, Globe Staff

A woman from Kingswood, Texas, could become the first person in the United States to receive transplants for both arms above the elbow. Katy Hayes, 43, lost all four limbs when she was infected with a flesh-eating bacteria after giving birth to her third child two years ago. Hayes has been going through physical and psychological screening at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston to be placed on the transplant list to receive new arms.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Disease trackers have confirmed that a 6-year-old Millbury boy, suspected of dying of food poisoning, did have E. coli bacteria in his system. In an e-mailed statement Thursday, Anne Roach, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said that the agency confirmed the presence of E.coli 0157 in its investigation. E. coli 0157 is a germ typically found in ground beef, but the bacteria is killed when the meat is thoroughly cooked. It is also found in raw milk.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Dr. Timothy Lepore seems plucked from fiction. Nantucket’s only full-time surgeon is a recognized expert on the tick-borne illness babesiosis, a conservative and the island’s only abortion provider, counsel to alcoholics and vacationing politicians. New York Times reporter Pam Belluck’s new book, Island Practice, profiles Lepore, giving readers an inside look at the peculiar challenges of health care on the island while reflecting on those that all communities face.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Consumer Reports magazine, long seen as an authority on the performance of automobiles, appliances, and air conditioners, is now rating a service commonly used but difficult to measure: your primary care doctor. The July issue, on stands Thursday, includes a special insert scoring 487 Massachusetts adult and pediatric practices on how well doctors communicate with patients and specialists, whether the staff is courteous, and other measures meant to judge patients’ experience at the office.

By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff

A former research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School has been found to have fabricated and falsified data in a scientific manuscript that was accepted by a journal in 2008 but withdrawn in 2009, before publication. According to a report by the federal Office of Research Integrity, Jian Ma was found to have falsified or fabricated portions of multiple figures that compared different types of mouse lung cancer cells.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Federal regulators announced a multi-year initiative Wednesday to slash the inappropriate use of antipsychotic drugs in nursing home residents, saying that nearly 40 percent of residents with dementia were receiving the powerful sedatives though they didn’t have a condition that would warrant it. The US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said it was aiming to reduce the use of antipsychotic drugs in nursing home residents by 15 percent by the end of this year.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Business and consumer groups that were close allies during debate over the 2006 state health law are divided over how far the state should go in its plan to control health costs. Here’s a look at that story and others from recent Globe coverage.

By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff

A study led by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health adds to the emerging picture of how difficult it will be to use genetic information to make meaningful predictions about risk for common diseases. The researchers studied common gene variations and environmental risk factors that have been linked to breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis, and found that there was only a modest increase in risk prediction, of 1 to 3 percent at most.

By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff

The fastest growing cancer cells gorge themselves on a particular nutrient called glycine, a team of Boston-area scientists reported Thursday, providing a possible new lead in efforts to develop therapies that can stop a tumor’s rapacious growth. Cancer has long been known to reprogram how cells burn energy, altering how they consume sugar. That nearly century-old observation has recently undergone a revival of interest, as it has become clear that genes that drive cancer also alter metabolism.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

A loophole in Massachusetts law that allows nursing homes to advertise specialized Alzheimer’s and dementia care units, even though their workers may have no training in caring for such residents, is one step closer to being closed. A proposal that would establish minimum standards for such units was approved by the House of Representatives Wednesday and is headed for the state Senate.

By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff

South Shore Hospital in South Weymouth will pay $750,000 to settle charges related to a 2010 data breach that compromised the personal information of more than 800,000 people, according to a release from the Massachusetts attorney general’s office. The settlement, approved Thursday in Suffolk Superior Court, includes a civil penalty of $250,000 and $225,000 to pay for fund to be used by the attorney general’s office to promote education on the protection of personal data, the release said.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Harvard School of Dental Medicine is one of 11 schools selected by the National Institutes of Health to help create training material for diagnosing and treating pain.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Three US senators are ratcheting up a campaign to slash the misuse of powerful sedatives, known as antipsychotics, in the nation’s nursing homes. The three -- Senators Herb Kohl, D-Wis., Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. -- have filed a proposal that would require federal regulators to issue standardized rules for nursing homes to follow in seeking permission from patients, or their designated health care agents, such as a family member, before administering antipsychotics for off-label use.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

While at a conference in Buenos Aires, a Boston Children’s Hospital employee lost a laptop containing a file with information about 2,159 patient, including names, birth dates, diagnoses, and treatment information. The laptop was password protected but not encrypted, according to a hospital press release.

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Seven Massachusetts hospitals that care for a large number of poor patients will receive $628 million over three years to invest in electronic health records, to move toward new ways of paying for care, and to track patient health over time, state officials announced Tuesday. The money was preliminarily approved in December, as part of the agreement between the state and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services about how to implement the state’s Medicaid program.

By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff

Lahey Health System, corporate parent of Lahey Clinic in Burlington and its newly merged partner, Northeast Health System in Beverly, has named former top hospital regulator David G. Spackman as general counsel and senior vice president of governmental affairs.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard will accept a Webby Award Monday in the science category.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Massachusetts senators, in a near-consensus vote yesterday, passed their version of a bill to control the growth of health care costs in the state. Lawmakers debated the bill, and 265 amendments, for two days. Here’s a roundup of the coverage.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Partners HealthCare is in negotiations to replace its patchwork of electronic health records systems with a single commercial system created by Wisconsin developer Epic Systems Corp. Expected to cost at least $600 million over 10 years, the Epic system would give each patient a single record accessible by all Partners providers, at a time when doctors and hospitals are under pressure to keep tabs on the sickest people they care for and to better track their own performance over time.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

As part of an effort to better define its marketing strategy, Children’s Hospital Boston has decided to change its name. From here on out, it will officially be called -- drum roll, please -- Boston Children’s Hospital. Isn’t that what most people call it anyway? Yes, said Margaret Coughlin, chief of marketing and communications. “It’s already in the lexicon,” she said.