RENNES, France A man left brain dead after a drug trial in northwest France died on Sunday, said the hospital where he was being treated. The Rennes hospital said in a statement that five other volunteers were in stable condition after they were admitted last ... More »
FREETOWN More than 100 people have been quarantined in Sierra Leone after coming in contact with a woman who died of Ebola last week, highlighting the potential for the disease to spread, just as the deadliest outbreak on record appeared to be over. The World ... More »
LONDON Drugmaker Shire Plc clinched its six-month pursuit of Baxalta International Inc on Monday by agreeing a $32 billion cash and stock offer that will make it one of the world’s leading rare disease specialists. The London-listed group, which first approach... More »
LOS ANGELES In the latest disruption from the biggest methane gas leak in California history, nearly 2,000 Los Angeles children returning to class this week after winter break have been reassigned to schools outside the affected area over health concerns. The ... More »
Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical entrepreneur facing U.S. charges of securities fraud, has said he had been the target of legal authorities for his much-criticized drug-price hikes and his over-the-top public persona, the Wall Street Journal reported. Shkrel... More »
BANGKOK Thai police on Monday said they will charge 11 activists who tried to stage a protest over suspected corruption in an army-built park with illegal assembly as allegations of irregularities in the park’s funding persist. Dozens of students activists wer... More »
Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical executive facing U.S. charges of securities fraud, lost control of his Twitter account to hackers on Sunday, hours after he took to Twitter to plead his innocence, his spokesman said. “It was hacked,” Craig Stevens, a spokesm... More »
WASHINGTON The film “Concussion,” tracing a forensic pathologist’s quest to expose the truth about brain injuries in the NFL, casts a spotlight on an issue that has roiled America’s most popular sports league. The movie also may give parents pause, according t... More »
ZURICH Drug companies have taken too great a share of the benefits of new drug treatments but are moving to different models involving sharing more with health systems and insurers, the head of Swiss-based Novartis was quoted saying on Sunday. “We need to tran... More »
(Reuters Health) – Playing three-dimensional video games just 30 minutes a day might mean new memories are less likely to fade away, a small U.S. study suggests. For two weeks, researchers asked 69 novice gamers to devote a half-hour daily to playing either th... More »
LONDON AstraZeneca (AZN.L) said on Thursday it had agreed to buy 55 percent stake of privately held biotech firm Acerta Pharma for $4 billion to give it access to a new kind of drug for fighting blood cancers. AstraZeneca will pay $2.5 billion upfront, with a ... More »
PARIS France has detected the first cases of low pathogenic H5N3 bird flu and found more cases of highly infectious strains in an outbreak of the disease in the southwest of the country. Three cases of H5N3 bird flu were found at three different farms in the s... More »
NEW YORK Former Adelphia Communications Corp CEO John Rigas, who is serving a 12-year sentence for his role in a fraud that led to the cable company’s collapse, is seeking release from prison due to his “precipitously deteriorating health.” Lawyers for Rigas, ... More »
BERLIN Volkswagen has denied a report saying its chief executive and chairman were urged on Sunday by its third-largest shareholder to reduce the influence of VW’s powerful unions as it battles to overcome its emissions scandal. CEO Matthias Mueller and Chairm... More »
ZURICH Novartis’ phase III study for its acute myeloid leukemia (AML) drug showed it improved overall survival by 23 percent for patients with FLT3 mutations, the Swiss drugmaker said on Sunday. Basel-based Novartis said the study was the first large controlle... More »
ZURICH Swiss drugmaker Novartis said the latest findings from a study on its newest therapy for two kinds of blood cancer track earlier results, bolstering its confidence in a 2017 U.S. regulatory submission. Novartis is testing CTL019, its investigational chi... More »
WASHINGTON In the ruins of a medieval convent in the French city of Rennes, archaeologists discovered five heart-shaped urns made of lead, each containing an embalmed human heart. Now, roughly four centuries after they were buried, researchers have used modern... More »
VIENNA Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding has dropped out of a high-profile project to develop an antibiotic for treating “superbug” infections, the company said on Sunday. Roche had agreed in 2013 to pay privately held partner Polyphor up to 500 million Swiss fran... More »
SHANGHAI China, already a global powerhouse in high-tech areas from solar panels to bullet trains, is turning its industrial might to the challenge of making more of its own drugs for a vast and aging population. Given the 10 years or more it typically takes t... More »
DAKAR A one-month-old baby girl who was Guinea’s last reported Ebola case left hospital on Saturday, delighting medical staff and putting the country on course to be declared free of the deadly virus. Guinea will become officially Ebola-free after 42 days if n... More »
(Reuters Health) – Many preschoolers in daycare may need more outdoor time to help increase their odds of getting enough physical activity, a small U.S. study suggests. Pediatricians recommend that young children get at least an hour a day of physical activity... More »
LONDON/NEW YORK/FRANKFURT Investment bank Lazard is working with Sanofi’s management to prepare a sale or listing of its Merial animal health unit, aiming to land the leading advisory job for the deal, which could value the business at up 12 billion euros ($12... More »
Pfizer Inc’s (PFE.N) looming deal to buy Botox maker Allergan Plc (AGN.N) for more than $150 billion will cap a record-breaking run for mergers and acquisitions in the healthcare sector, taking the cumulative value of deals in 2015 to more than $600 billion. H... More »
LONDON, The World Health Organization’s failure to sound the alarm until months into West Africa’s Ebola outbreak was an “egregious failure” which added to the enormous suffering and death toll, global health experts said on Monday. A specialist panel convened... More »
MONROVIA Liberia has placed 153 people under surveillance as it seeks to control a new Ebola outbreak in the capital more than two months after the country was declared free of the virus, health officials said. Three Ebola cases emerged in Liberia on Friday. T... More »
Novartis AG said on Friday it received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regular approval for a drug combination to treat an aggressive form of skin cancer. The FDA approved Tafinlar and Mekinist for treatment of metastatic melanoma based on two years ov... More »
(Corrects headline and first paragraph. Study said the law may lead more women to self-induce abortion, not that this has already occurred. Corrects fourth paragraph to drop erroneous time frame) By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas A Texas law aimed at restricting... More »
CHICAGO U.S. health regulators on Thursday cleared the way for a type of genetically engineered Atlantic salmon to be farmed for human consumption – the first such approval for an animal whose DNA has been scientifically modified. Five years ago, the U.S. Food... More »
NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES In recent days, the largest U.S. managers of private prescription drug benefits have cut off at least eight pharmacies that work closely with drugmakers, intensifying scrutiny of a system that helps inflate drug prices, officials at the be... More »
WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to hear a challenge to tough abortion restrictions in Texas raises questions about the legal fate of similar laws in more than a dozen other states. The court’s ruling, due by June, could spell out the ext... More »
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday it approved Baxalta Inc’s drug for use in patients with a type of rare bleeding disorder. The drug, Adynovate, was approved to control and reduce the frequency of bleeding episodes in patients with Hemophili... More »
BOGOTA Colombia said on Friday it plans to legalize medical marijuana in a further shift in drug policy after suspending aerial fumigation of illicit crops. The government is preparing a decree which would approve the therapeutic use of marijuana, the presiden... More »
WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court took up a major new abortion case on Friday, agreeing to hear a challenge by abortion providers to parts of a restrictive, Republican-backed Texas law that they contend are aimed at shutting clinics that offer the procedure. T... More »
CHICAGO The sound of gunshots in Harlem in 1997 was nothing new to Jamal Joseph, who was then a 44-year-old filmmaker living in the New York City neighborhood. “You’d hear gunshots every night,” he recalled. “The crack epidemic was raging- the neighborhood was... More »
LONDON British pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies face a major skills shortage which threatens future investment and the long-term success of the life sciences sector, according to a new industry report. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical In... More »
LONDON Three of Europe’s top drugmakers – GlaxoSmithKline, Roche and Sanofi – face health checks this week at high-profile presentations designed to show they can overcome looming market threats. The unusual confluence of investor days comes at a testing time ... More »
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it approved Johnson & Johnson’s chemotherapy to treat specific soft-tissue sarcomas (STS) that have spread to other parts of the body or cannot be removed by surgery. The drug, Yondelis, is designed to delay the progr... More »
LOS ANGELES California Governor Jerry Brown on Saturday signed a bill that sets the strictest government standards in the United States for the use of antibiotics in livestock production. The move from California, known for its leadership on public health and ... More »
(Reuters Health) – A therapeutic program of weight-bearing exercise reduces pain and improves joint function, at least for two to six months, for people with osteoarthritis, according to a review of previous trials. “We had a systematic review for Cochrane fro... More »
(Reuters Health) – Although women make up roughly half of the world’s HIV cases, they remain largely excluded from clinical trials testing drugs, vaccines and potential cures for the virus, a research review confirms. In an analysis spanning several decades th... More »
(Reuters Health) – Caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease isn’t easy under the best of circumstances, but it may be much more stressful for spouses and people who suffer from depression, a Finnish study suggests. Researchers followed 236 family caregi... More »
Switzerland’s Roche has a potential new multi-billion-dollar drug to help it diversify beyond cancer treatments following the success of ocrelizumab against a hard-to-treat type of multiple sclerosis. The injectable antibody medicine is the first product to sh... More »
COPENHAGEN Shares in Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) rose as much as 5 percent on Monday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the diabetes drug Tresiba, allowing the Danish drugmaker to prepare its largest ever drug launch. The FDA’s decision lat... More »
LOS ANGELES A brain-to-computer technology that can translate thoughts into leg movements has enabled a man paralyzed from the waist down by a spinal cord injury to become the first such patient to walk without the use of robotics, doctors in Southern Californ... More »
Dallas Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant suffered a broken bone in his foot on Sunday and is expected to miss 4-6 weeks, the team announced. Bryant caught five passes for 48 yards in the Cowboys’ 27-26season-opening win over the New York Giants but exited during the... More »
LONDON Pfizer’s stop-smoking drug Chantix does not raise risks of heart attack or depression, contrary to previous reports, and should be recommended to more smokers wanting to quit, scientists said on Monday. In a study tracking 150,000 smokers in England for... More »
(Reuters Health) – Weight-loss surgery beats medication for controlling type 2 diabetes in obese people, according to the longest-term trial ever to compare the two approaches. Half of the patients treated with weight-loss surgery in the study were diabetes-fr... More »
ZURICH Syngenta AG, the Swiss agricultural chemicals maker, was seen opening up more than 7 percent after a source said Monsanto Co. had sweetened its takeover offer, according to premarket indicators in Zurich. U.S.-based Monsanto increased its offer to buy S... More »
(Reuters Health) – Taking one or two baby aspirins a day for at least five years was tied to a lower risk of colorectal cancer in a study from Denmark. Earlier studies had suggested that aspirin and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibupro... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Too few women and minorities are entering certain medical specialties in the U.S., researchers say. Diversifying the physician workforce may be key to addressing health disparities and inequities, Dr. Curtiland Deville of Johns Hopk... More »
FREETOWN Sierra Leone released its last confirmed Ebola patient from hospital on Monday and began a 42-day countdown to being declared free of the virus, medical sources said. The world’s worst known Ebola epidemic has raged in West Africa for more than 18 mon... More »
LONDON British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca named Sean Bohen as its chief medical officer, in an appointment that it said could help accelerate the development of new oncology and immunology medicines. AstraZeneca, Britain’s second biggest drugmaker behi... More »
MUMBAI/ NEW DELHI The Indian government has filed a lawsuit against Swiss food firm Nestle’s Indian unit, seeking 6.4 billion rupees ($99 million) in damages on behalf of consumers after the country’s worst packaged food scare in a decade. Nestle, the first fo... More »
MUMBAI The Indian government has filed a class action suit for 6.4 billion rupees ($99 million) against Nestle’s Indian unit on behalf of the country’s consumers, citing unfair trade practices and the sale of defective goods. Nestle is the first foreign firm t... More »
Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline closed its North Carolina factory on Tuesday after testing at a cooling tower found bacteria that causes deadly Legionnaire’s disease, a company spokeswoman said. The Legionella bacteria was discovered during routine inspections at th... More »
MUMBAI India will seek damages of 6.39 billion rupees ($99.3 million) from Swiss group Nestle after a food scare involving reports of excess lead in the firm’s popular Maggi noodles forced a nationwide recall, a government official said on Tuesday. Nestle, whi... More »
LONDON Tadpoles are contracting a new, highly infectious disease that may be threatening frog populations worldwide, British scientists have found. A parasitic disease caused by single-celled microbes known as “protists” was found in the livers of tadpole samp... More »
