| | |
| Three die of meningitis outbreak in Los Angeles area Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 09:10 PM PDT Three men in their 20s have died from a meningitis outbreak in the gay community in the Los Angeles area this year, a public health spokesman said on Thursday, a day after officials called on HIV-positive gay men in the region to be vaccinated against the disease. One man died in February and the other two died in late March, said a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. They were among eight people who have contracted invasive meningococcal disease in 2014, the Public Health Department said in a statement. That is seen as a high rate of infection for the Los Angeles area, which in recent years has seen the number of annual cases range between 12 and 37. Full Story | Top |
| Fonterra fined by New Zealand court over botulism food scare Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 09:07 PM PDT  Fonterra Ltd has been fined NZ$300,000 ($256,200) for the way it handled the food safety scare last year about potentially contaminated products and the damage the false alarm did to New Zealand's reputation for quality dairy products. Fonterra said in August last year that it had found a bacteria that could cause botulism in a range of products sold by a number of multinational companies. Testing later showed there had been no botulism. The scare prompted the recall of products, including baby formula, from shelves from China to Saudi Arabia, and led several countries to place a temporary ban on some New Zealand products. Full Story | Top |
| Generic drug maker Mylan may buy Swedish rival Meda: FT Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 06:56 PM PDT (Reuters) - Generic drug maker Mylan Inc is looking to buy Swedish rival Meda AB in a deal that would create a $23 billion pharmaceutical company, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. The exact value of the deal is unknown but Mylan is likely to pay a "significant" premium to Meda's market value, a person familiar with the matter told the Financial Times. Meda's market valuation stood at 29.5 billion Swedish krona ($4.5 billion) at the end of trading on Thursday while Mylan's market value was $18.5 billion. Pennsylvania-based Mylan has appointed advisers to help it put together a deal for Meda, people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times. Full Story | Top |
| California court revives suit claiming woman frozen alive in morgue Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 06:09 PM PDT By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California appeals court has revived a malpractice suit brought by the family of an 80-year-old grandmother they claim was prematurely declared dead by doctors then frozen alive inside a body bag in the hospital's morgue. A lower-court judge had dismissed the lawsuit brought in May 2012 by relatives of Maria de Jesus Arroyo against White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles over the woman's 2010 death, on grounds that the statute of limitations had lapsed. But a three-judge panel of a state appeals court sided with the family on Wednesday in agreeing they could not have known how Arroyo was alleged to have died until it was brought to light by a pathologist in an expert opinion he gave in December 2011. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. Army names Fort Hood shooter, says had mental illness Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 05:42 PM PDT  By Lisa Maria Garza FORT HOOD, Texas (Reuters) - The soldier suspected of shooting dead three people before killing himself at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas was identified as Ivan Lopez, a man battling mental illness when he went on a rampage, the base commander said on Thursday. No motive was given for the shooting spree on Wednesday, which also left 16 wounded in what was the second mass killing in five years at one of the largest military bases in the United States, raising questions about security at such installations. "We have very strong evidence that he had a medical history that indicates unstable psychiatric or psychological conditions," Lieutenant General Mark Milley told reporters. Lopez, 34, originally from Puerto Rico, had been treated for depression and anxiety. Full Story | Top |
| Australia in a fog over ban on branded cigarettes Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 05:10 PM PDT  By Jane Wardell SYDNEY (Reuters) - More than a year after Australia became the first country to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes, there is little hard evidence to prove the trailblazing move is worth emulating. At the King of the Pack tobacconist in central Sydney, James Yu shakes his head despondently as he says his cigarette sales volumes have plummeted 30 percent over the past year. Yu's sliding sales should be music to the ears of the Australian government, a vindication of laws introduced in December, 2012, that forced tobacco companies to replace logos and branding with graphic images of smoking-related diseases on an olive green background. Cigarette sales in supermarkets, which account for a large portion of the market, shrank 0.9 percent overall by volume in 2013, according to the latest data available from Retail World, but there is no clear link to the plain packaging laws. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. FDA ups China drug inspections amid global supply-chain concerns Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 04:48 PM PDT (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is increasing its oversight of Chinese manufacturers of pharmaceutical ingredients to improve the safety of the U.S. drug supply chain, the director of the agency's China office, Christopher Hickey, said on Thursday. Hickey was one of several witnesses who testified before a hearing of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which monitors and investigates the national security implications of bilateral trade and economic relations between the two countries. Armed with new legal authority and additional funding, the FDA has begun adding staff and inspectors in China, but the process is not without challenges, Hickey said. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. OKs portable antidote for painkiller overdoses Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 04:44 PM PDT  By Susan Heavey WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators on Thursday approved a portable device to treat painkiller overdoses that people without medical training can use in emergency situations, a move to combat the rise of deaths from the abuse of opioids, including heroin. The Food and Drug Administration said making the cellphone-sized device with the recovery drug naloxone available for wider use could help save lives as opiod drug overdoses increase. The approval means emergency responders or even family members could have an easy-to-use treatment in cases of suspected overdose of opioids, which include pain drugs like oxycodone, morphine, codeine and hydrocodone as well as heroin. "It's really an effort to make this very usable," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said. Full Story | Top |
| Roche lung cancer pill gets reprieve in reversal Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 04:36 PM PDT LONDON (Reuters) - The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on Friday reversed an earlier decision to limit the use of Roche's Tarceva cancer pill on the state health service in a move the drugmaker said would help around 2,000 patients a year. New draft guidance from NICE now backs use of Tarceva for people with non-small-cell lung cancer that has progressed after chemotherapy in wider circumstances than originally suggested. ... Full Story | Top |
| Roche lung cancer pill gets reprieve in UK reversal Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 04:08 PM PDT Britain's health cost watchdog NICE on Friday reversed an earlier decision to limit the use of Roche's Tarceva cancer pill on the state health service in a move the drugmaker said would help around 2,000 patients a year. New draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) now backs use of Tarceva for people with non-small-cell lung cancer that has progressed after chemotherapy in wider circumstances than originally suggested. NICE said its decision to maintain Tarceva access followed new evidence on the clinical and cost effectiveness of the drug, and also took into account the side-effect profile of the chemotherapy alternative. Full Story | Top |
| Mylan sues Celgene for blocking Revlimid, Thalomid generics Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 04:08 PM PDT Mylan Inc on Thursday sued Celgene Corp to stop the latter's effort to keep generic versions of two drugs that generate $4.5 billion of annual sales off the market. The lawsuit accuses Celgene of maintaining unlawful monopolies over Revlimid, which treats disorders caused by poorly formed blood cells; Revlimid is a branded version of lenalidomide, and is a derivative of thalidomide, a drug introduced in the 1950s for which Thalomid is a branded version. Mylan said both drugs can cost more than $100,000 for a year's supply. Full Story | Top |
| Northwestern quarterback says 'confident' of unionization vote Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 03:29 PM PDT By Amanda Becker WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Northwestern University quarterback who is behind a push to unionize the school's football team said on Thursday he is "very confident" that his teammates will vote on April 25 to join the College Athletes Players Association (CAPA). Kain Colter, a senior at Northwestern, appeared on a panel and took questions in Washington, D.C., along with CAPA co-founder Ramogi Huma, a former University of California-Los Angeles football player who now advocates for student athletes. ... Full Story | Top |
| Wall Street dips as investors wary before jobs data Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 02:15 PM PDT  By Caroline Valetkevitch NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks slipped on Thursday, as investors turned cautious ahead of Friday's monthly jobs report, while a drop in biotech and momentum shares dragged the Nasdaq down nearly 1 percent. The Dow ended down just a fraction of a point, within about 4 points of its record closing high of 16,576.66 set on December 31. The Dow posted an all-time intraday high during the session. It's not just going to have one good year and be done," said Randy Warren, chief investment officer of Warren Financial Service in Exton, Pennsylvania. Full Story | Top |
| Mentally demanding jobs linked to slower cognitive decline Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 01:50 PM PDT By C. E. Huggins NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People with mentally challenging jobs, like air traffic controllers, doctors and financial analysts, tend to stay mentally sharper while on the job and following retirement, results of a new study suggest. "Working in a job that involves a lot of thinking, analyzing, problem solving, creativity, and other complex mental processing is related to higher levels of cognitive functioning not only before retirement (while we are still working) but after retirement as well," lead author Gwenith G. Fisher, of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, told Reuters Health in a email. This is not the first study to suggest a link between mental demands on the job and workers' mental function. Erten-Lyons, a neurologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, was not involved in the new study. Full Story | Top |
| Appeals court allows Texas execution to proceed Thursday, Apr 03, 2014 01:12 PM PDT  The decision puts back on track an execution scheduled for Thursday evening that had been suspended temporarily earlier on Wednesday by a federal judge in Houston, who found that Texas has hidden information about the supplier of the drugs. U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore ordered the state to disclose, under seal, information regarding its execution drug, finding that Texas had provided information about the process by which two inmates would be executed and "masked information about the product that will kill them." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said the case might be different if the state were using a drug never before used or unheard of, whose efficiency was completely unknown, which was not the case. "Speculation is not enough." The federal judge's decision was part of a series of recent court rulings that have mandated states to release information about drugs used for lethal injection, saying that keeping the information secret violates due process protections of the U.S. Constitution. Full Story | Top |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment