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

Medicare Premiums Raised Again

Seniors face yet another increase in their health-care costs, thanks to the federal government.

The New York Times reported Saturday that basic Medicare premiums will go up again; this time the hike will be 13 percent, to $88.50 a month. Increased use of doctor’s services is behind the latest increase, the Times reported.

Many beneficiaries will have to pay an additional premium for the much-touted new prescription drug benefit program, set to start Jan. 1, which should average $32 a month. The combined premiums will now average $120 a month, the Times reported.

Medicare premiums are typically deducted from monthly Social Security checks, which currently average $955 a month for retirees, the Times said. Medicare provides medical coverage to 42 million people who are older or disabled.

The basic Medicare premium has gone up by nearly $30 a month, or 51 percent, from 2003 to 2006, Kirsten A. Sloan, a health policy analyst at AARP, told the Times.

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New Orleans Sludge Still Contaminated With Bacteria, Oil

Initial tests conducted on sediments taken after floodwaters receded in New Orleans show high amounts of E. coli bacteria and oil runoff from fuel and chemical plants, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday.

E. coli indicates there is fecal bacteria in the water and exposed sediment, and contact with both should be avoided, Marcus Peacock, the EPA’s deputy administrator, told reporters Friday at a news conference, the agency’s second this week. He said 18 sediment samples taken on Sept. 10 represented the start of “extensive” testing, the Bloomberg news service reported.

And flooded parts of New Orleans, which was 80 percent under water after Hurricane Katrina, include more than 60 chemical plants, oil refineries, and petroleum storage facilities, Bloomberg said.

The Coast Guard said Thursday that Hurricane Katrina may have spilled more than 7 million gallons of oil, about two-thirds of what was released in the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989, according to the Associated Press.

Contact with fuel oils can lead to skin and eye irritation, increased blood pressure, and headache, Bloomberg said.

Officials seo tips told Bloomberg that the full extent of the contamination probably won’t be known until the city is completely pumped out, which they say could take until mid-October.

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Defibrillator Problems on the Rise: FDA Study

Malfunctions in implanted heart devices called defibrillators were increasing even before a huge recall this summer by Guidant Corp., according to a joint study released Friday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Harvard University.

Defibrillators shock awkwardly beating hearts back into a normal rhythm. About 20 of every 1,000 devices malfunction, the researchers found. Those defects led to 31 deaths between 1990 and 2002, although that was a fraction of the more than 400,000 devices implanted during the span, the Associated Press reported.

Nonetheless, the study “points out the need for our agency to improve the way it regulates these products, and we’re doing just that,” Dr. Daniel Schultz, chief of the FDA’s medical devices unit, told the AP.

The research was presented Friday at a daylong meeting of the Heart Rhythm Society in Washington, D.C., to discuss recent safety problems with defibrillators and other implanted cardiac devices, including pacemakers.

The student loan calculator study’s leader, Dr. William Maisel of Harvard, found that from 1990 to 2002, 2.25 million pace