The Pennsylvania Department of Health has conditioned its request for emergency federal disease experts on the U.S. State health secretary Debra Bogen warned CDC director Erica Schwartz that Pennsylvania will rescind its request for an Epidemic Intelligence Service deployment if the federal agency excludes the fatalities from its national tally. The Dispute Over Measles Fatality … Read more
GE HealthCare Technologies is currently in talks over a potential $1 billion acquisition of radiopharmaceutical developer Sofie Biosciences, according to a report by the Financial Times citing sources familiar with the matter. If completed, the transaction would mark the second major acquisition for GE HealthCare since its spin-off from General Electric in 2024. Why Sofie … Read more
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Scholar Rock’s injectable treatment Isembyld on Sept. 11 to improve motor function in adults and children with spinal muscular atrophy, marking the company’s first regulatory approval and sending shares up over 23% in after-market trading, according to Reuters. FDA Grants First Regulatory Approval to Scholar Rock for Isembyld … Read more
The White House announced on Thursday that it will send $500 refunds to nearly one million Americans enrolled in Obamacare health insurance plans across 30 states, citing “user fees” passed on to consumers in higher premiums that exceeded the amounts needed to run the Healthcare.gov federal exchange. Details of the Obamacare User Fee Refunds and … Read more
Novartis shares dropped 3.3% on Monday morning, according to Reuters reporting, after its cholesterol drug pelacarsen failed in a large, late-stage study by not reducing heart attack and stroke risk in patients with high Lp(a). The setback casts doubt on dedicated Lp(a)-lowering therapies and increases pressure on upcoming data for the Swiss drugmaker’s pipeline. Pelacarsen … Read more
According to government data released on Monday, confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo have surpassed 6,000, creating the largest epidemic in the central African country’s history. The current outbreak has officially exceeded the previous worst outbreak, which lasted from 2018 to 2020, according to official figures shared by the communication ministry on … Read more
China’s drug regulator has accepted Novo Nordisk’s application to sell an oral version of its Wegovy weight-loss drug, according to a Reuters report published on August 27. The regulatory filing in the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical market marks a step for the Danish drugmaker as it chases rival Eli Lilly in the burgeoning anti-obesity sector. Regulatory … Read more
New research indicates that patients using GLP-1 drugs for weight loss or diabetes management face a higher risk of developing alopecia compared to those taking other classes of diabetes medications. While the overall incidence remains low—estimated between 3 and 9 per 1,000 people annually—studies published in The BMJ and the Journal of the American Academy … Read more
Public health authorities are currently scrambling to secure medical countermeasures for an outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo. With 2,473 confirmed cases and 999 deaths reported by the government, the lack of approved vaccines or treatments for this specific strain—which carries a fatality rate of up … Read more
New Cardiovascular Guidelines Expand Statin Eligibility to Millions Updated medical guidelines issued by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology are set to expand the use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs to an additional 21.5 million Americans. According to research published in JAMA, these recommendations move the assessment of cardiovascular risk from a … Read more