Boris Johnson, leadership candidate for Britain's Conservative Prime Minister, leaves his home in London, Britain June 15, 2019. REUTERS/Toby Melville
(Reuters) - British conservative lawmaker Esther McVey said on Saturday that she will support Boris Johnson in his bid to be prime minister, The Telegraph reported.
"Boris Johnson is supporting my agenda – which is why I'm supporting him", she wrote bit.ly/2WLp52V in the newspaper, adding that she looks forward to working with Johnson to deliver on behalf of "blue collar Conservatives" across the country.
Reporting by Ishita Chigilli Palli in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis
FILE PHOTO: Used blister packets that contained medicines, tablets and pills are seen, in this picture illustration taken June 30, 2018. REUTERS/Russell Boyce/Illustration
(Reuters) - U.S. drugmakers filed a lawsuit on Friday challenging a new government regulation that would require them to disclose the list price of prescription drugs in direct-to-consumer television advertisements.
The lawsuit was jointly filed by Amgen Inc, Merck & Co, Eli Lilly and Co and the Association Of National Advertisers in the U.S. district court for the district of Columbia.
The new regulation, which was finalized on May 8 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and set to take effect in July, is part of the government’s efforts to bring down the cost of prescription medicines for U.S. consumers.
Drugmakers have argued against the regulation, saying list prices do not reflect the final price paid by patients as it excludes rebates and discounts drugmakers may offer, as well as patient assistance programs to make drugs more affordable for some.
“Not only does the rule raise serious freedom of speech concerns, it mandates an approach that fails to account for differences among insurance, treatments and patients themselves, by requiring disclosure of list price,” Amgen said in a statement.
“Most importantly, it does not answer the fundamental question patients are asking: ‘What will I have to pay for my medicine?’” Amgen said.
It remains to be seen whether the advertising regulation would have any actual impact on lowering costs if the requirement goes into effect.
“If the drug companies are embarrassed by their prices or afraid that the prices will scare patients away, they should lower them,” HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said in an emailed statement.
“President Trump and Secretary Azar are committed to providing patients the information they need to make their own informed healthcare decisions.”
Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by James Emmanuel and Bill Berkrot
FILE PHOTO: Used blister packets that contained medicines, tablets and pills are seen, in this picture illustration taken June 30, 2018. REUTERS/Russell Boyce/Illustration
(Reuters) - U.S. drugmakers on Friday filed a lawsuit to prevent the companies from disclosing the list price of prescription drugs in direct-to-consumer television advertisements as per a newly proposed government regulation.
The lawsuit was jointly filed by Amgen Inc, Merck & Co Inc, Eli Lilly and Co and the Association Of National Advertisers in the U.S. district court in Columbia.
The new regulation on advertisement, which was finalized on May 8 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and takes effect in July, is part of the government’s efforts to bring down costs for U.S. consumers.
However, drug companies have argued against the proposed rule, saying list prices do not reflect the final price paid by patients as it excludes rebates and discounts drugmakers may offer.
“Not only does the rule raise serious freedom of speech concerns, it mandates an approach that fails to account for differences among insurance, treatments and patients themselves, by requiring disclosure of list price,” Amgen said in a statement.
“Most importantly, it does not answer the fundamental question patients are asking: ‘What will I have to pay for my medicine?’”
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by James Emmanuel
(Reuters Health) - More than three years after Pennsylvania issued a statewide order expanding access to the life-saving opioid antidote naloxone, the product was still hard to purchase in Philadelphia pharmacies, researchers found.
In 2017, two-thirds of pharmacies in Philadelphia either did not stock naloxone, or they still insisted on a physician’s prescription, which the law said was no longer required.
In the wake of the opioid addiction crisis that has claimed thousands of lives, many U.S. states have passed laws like Pennsylvania’s, which allow the drug to be dispensed without a prescription and mandate that every drugstore carry it.
Laws that let pharmacists sell naloxone without prescription have been associated with a nearly 30% drop in the number of opioid overdose deaths, a separate team of researchers reported last month. (reut.rs/2WM3qMa)
Yet this study is not the first to find that drugstores are slow to comply. Research has shown that most pharmacies in California and Texas, for example, do not carry the drug or make it readily available.
The new results add to the growing body of evidence that these laws are not being enforced, experts said.
“While policy can be put in place, it’s not sufficient and has to be followed up with education, and reinforcement at the county and pharmacy level, and not just assume that the policy itself will ensure access to anyone who needs it,” Dr. Michael Lynch, a toxicologist and emergency medicine physician who was not involved in the study, told Reuters Health.
For the current study, Dima Qato of the University of Illinois, Chicago and colleagues contacted 418 drugstores in Philadelphia between February and August 2017 and found that only about 34% had naloxone in stock - and 38.5% of those drugstores required a physician’s prescription to dispense the drug.
People living in communities with elevated rates of opioid overdose deaths were the least likely to have access to naloxone without a prescription and had to pay more to buy the drug, the researchers wrote in JAMA Network Open.
“Areas that need this policy enforced the most are areas that lack it and that’s a concern,” Qato told Reuters Health by phone.
An overdose of opioids like morphine or heroin slows breathing, reducing the supply of oxygen to the body. Naloxone helps reverse the effects of an overdose and saves lives.
Lynch, who is also the medical director of the Pittsburgh Poison Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, notes that the high importance of naloxone may not necessarily translate to high demand.
“If patients or individuals are not coming in and asking for it, pharmacies, especially a local independent pharmacy with pretty narrow margins, may not continue to stock a medication that isn’t being dispensed,” he added.
However, Mel Brodsky, executive director of PARD, an association of community pharmacies in Philadelphia, disputes the study’s findings.
“It is from 2 years ago - a lot has changed. Philadelphia mandates that every pharmacy have 2 doses of naloxone in stock. As I travel to my stores, I see 95% having naloxone in stock,” he told Reuters Health by email.
Dr. Michael Fingerhood, of Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland, told Reuters Health that the low numbers in the study may be partly due to a shortage of naloxone in 2017.
“I would do a similar study now, (when) we don’t have a shortage of naloxone, and see if there has been any difference, two years later,” he said.
SOURCE: bit.ly/2IEd5LZ JAMA Network Open, online June 7, 2019
(Reuters Health) - More than three-quarters of antibiotic prescriptions written by dentists before dental procedures are unnecessary and might do more harm than good, a new U.S. study found.
Dentists write one of every ten antibiotic prescriptions in the United States, and despite national declines, antibiotic prescribing by dentists has held steady over the years, researchers wrote.
Dentists need to be included in the public health conversation regarding appropriate antibiotic use and antimicrobial resistance, lead author Katie Suda of the University of Illinois, Chicago, told Reuters Health by phone.
Antibiotics before dental procedures are recommended for a small subset of patients with certain medical conditions, to prevent a serious heart infection that might arise from the release of oral bacteria into the bloodstream during the procedures. The infection, endocarditis, is an inflammation of the lining of the heart’s chambers and valves.
To see if antibiotics are being prescribed for dental patients according to established guidelines, Suda and her team used an insurance database to analyze prescriptions written during 168,000 dental visits from 2011 to 2015.
They found that 80.9% of prescriptions for antibiotics to be taken before procedures were unnecessary.
Among the 91,438 patients in the study, only 20.9% had a cardiac condition that put them at the highest risk of developing endocarditis and warranted an antibiotic prescription.
Patients with artificial joint implants had more than double the odds of receiving unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions compared with patients who did not have the implants. This is despite the fact that the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the American Dental Association now say people with prosthetic joint devices do not need antibiotics before dental procedures.
In particular, the antibiotic clindamycin was highly likely to be unnecessarily prescribed. Clindamycin has been linked with a severe form of diarrhea known as Clostridium difficile (C. diff). A single dose of clindamycin carries the same risk of C. diff infection as a prolonged course of the antibiotic, the researchers wrote, making it all the more alarming that clindamycin was among the overused antibiotics.
Misuse and overuse of antibiotics encourages bacteria to evolve and find ways to resist the medicines. The World Health Organization has called antibiotic resistance a global health emergency.
Why is there so much over-prescribing by dentists? Experts say dentists may face pressure from patients or patients’ cardiologists and orthopedic surgeons, who insist on antibiotics.
“Dentists feel like they are in a really tough position,” said Dr. Emily Spivak of the University of Utah School of Medicine, who wrote an editorial that was published with the study.
“They’re not physicians and they feel like they have to give (antibiotics) because they will be held accountable from the surgeon or the cardiologist if the patient gets an infection,” she told Reuters Health.
Other factors driving unnecessary prescribing may include dentists’ lack of awareness of the most recent guidelines, lack of agreement with these guidelines and the practice of ‘defensive medicine,’ experts said.
Spivak, however, believes the current study may over-inflate the numbers as it includes only commercially insured patients.
The ‘worried well’ or those who suffer from health anxiety may be driving some of this prescribing, she added.
Experts say patients should feel empowered to ask questions when their dentists prescribe antibiotics, and they shouldn’t pressure dentists to provide them with the drugs.
“An informed patient who asks questions can allow for a discussion between the dentist and the patient to truly understand whether they need an antibiotic,” Dr. Salim Virani of the Baylor College of Medicine, told Reuters Health by email.
SOURCE: bit.ly/2KdK109 and bit.ly/2R91tEt JAMA Network Open, online May 31, 2019
(Reuters) - Enanta Pharmaceuticals Inc said on Friday its treatment for a highly contagious respiratory infection met the main goal of reducing virus levels in the body and improving symptoms in patients in a mid-stage study.
The therapy, EDP-938, developed for treating respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection which currently has no available treatment, was compared with placebo, the company said.
RSV could lead to serious lung infections and even death in babies and the elderly who have a weaker immune system.
An average of 57,527 children younger than 5 years and 177,000 adults older than 65 years are hospitalized due to RSV infections every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Enanta said study results showed its therapy was generally safe and well tolerated and no drug discontinuations were observed.
Drugmakers Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc and Johnson & Johnson have abandoned their programs to find a treatment for the condition, and an experimental vaccine developed by Novavax Inc had failed a late-stage trial, earlier this year.
Reporting by Saumya Sibi Joseph in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli
British Conservative Andrea Leadsom speaks during the launch of her campaign for the Conservative Party leadership, in London, Britain June 11, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
(Reuters) - The UK’s Andrea Leadsom, who was defeated in the first round of a leadership contest, is now considering supporting interior minister Sajid Javid in the leadership race to succeed Prime Minister Theresa May, The Times reported.
Leadsom would back a candidate who would put Brexit at the “front and centre” of their plans for government, suggesting that Javid would be a serious contender for her support, The Times reported citing campaign sources.
The former House of Commons leader is expected to make a decision on whom to support over the weekend, The Times added.
Reporting by Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler
FILE PHOTO: The Walmart logo in New York, U.S., May 1, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
(Reuters) - IBM, Merck and Walmart have been chosen for a U.S. Food and Drug Administration pilot program that will explore using blockchain technology to improve the security of prescription drug supply and distribution.
The companies said they would work with consultancy KPMG to create a shared blockchain network that will allow real-time monitoring of products in the pharmaceutical supply chain.
The project has been authorized under the U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) that was set up to increase regulatory oversight of counterfeit, stolen, contaminated or otherwise harmful drugs.
The FDA has previously used the DSCSA to issue a warning letter to drug distributor McKesson Corp for violations involving opioid medications.
Opioids have been tied to thousands of overdose deaths and state and local governments across the United States have filed lawsuits seeking to hold pharmaceutical companies responsible for the epidemic of abuse.
The new project is aimed at reducing the time needed to track and trace prescription drugs, improving access to reliable distribution information and ensuring products are handled appropriately and stored at the right temperature while being distributed, the companies said in a statement.
Blockchain technology, originally conceived a decade ago as the basis for the cryptocurrency bitcoin, will help stakeholders establish a permanent record and can be integrated with existing systems used to trace products while they are distributed.
The project is scheduled to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2019 and results will be published in a report, the companies said.
Reporting by Tamara Mathias in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli
(Reuters) - A David and Goliath battle is brewing in the business of selling prescription medicines for pets, pitching veterinarians against online giants moving into this lucrative corner of the growing market for animal supplies.
Destiny Brown, Dr. Katie Buss, and Kingsley family pose with puppies at the Kings Veterinary Hospital in Loveland, Ohio, U.S., on April 26, 2019. Picture taken on April 26, 2019. Courtesy Jennifer Blodgett/Kings Veterinary Hospital/Handout via REUTERS
Americans spent $72.56 billion last year on their pets, according to American Pet Products Association. Prescription drugs were expected to account for over $10 billion, according to an estimate here from the Federal Trade Commission, and overall pet product sales are expected to keep growing by 4% a year. (Graphic:tmsnrt.rs/2KfxTvy)
With deep discounts and online convenience, Walmart Inc, soon-to-be listed Chewy.com and Amazon.com Inc’s Wag brand have effectively conquered the market for pet food, care products and other supplies, but until now veterinary practices, which both prescribe and sell drugs, have been a major source of prescription medication.
While Amazon so far has shown no interest in that market, Chewy’s and Walmart’s forays into the online pet pharmacy business threaten to change that, prompting veterinary clinics to seek help in defending their turf. Enter Covetrus Inc, Vet Source, which partners with Patterson Companies Inc, and others that offer tools to help vets manage their practices and give customers the convenience they have come to expect from online shopping.
“We started to realize this is what our clients want,” said Stephanie Foster, practice manager at Kings Veterinary Hospital in Loveland, Ohio. “They want to be able to order things at 11 o’ clock at night. They’re used to the Amazon mentality.”
Foster says she began using Covetrus to order drugs and supplies for the practice after it began losing sales of pet food and other products to online retailers. Now, her hospital has a website run by Covetrus under the practice’s name that effectively acts as its online pharmacy.
With that comes software that helps the clinic manage its inventory and track prescriptions, so Foster knows when clients need a refill and for those Covetrus collects a service fee that is a percentage of sales.
Foster said partnering with Covetrus has helped boost overall sales by half over the past three years because it gives clients online convenience, timely reminders and, despite the fees, competitive prices.
“Covetrus now has more leverage with the manufacturers than I will ever have as a small business,” she said. “They’re able to get the manufacturers to agree to instant rebates and they can do flash sales on products and things that we just can’t compete with.”
The company, formed by the combination of medical supply firm Henry Schein’s animal health unit and Vet’s First Choice and listed in February, represents some 100,000 veterinary practices globally. In the United States, 27,000 use some form of its services with over 8,000 - about a quarter of the market - signed up for prescription management, Covetrus says.
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PetSmart Inc-backed Chewy.com, whose sales soared from $26 million to $3.5 billion between 2012 and 2018, said in a filing ahead of its New York Stock Exchange debut this month it planned to expand its online pharmacy business launched last year.
The company has yet to update on the pharmacy’s performance and it would not comment for this article, citing the silent period ahead of its stock exchange debut.
Walmart joined the fray last month when it launched its online pet pharmacy WalmartPetRx.com and said it aimed to operate 100 in-store animal clinics by the end of the year.
Analysts say, however, the prescription pet medicine business could prove more challenging than other pet products.
Those who want to buy medication online still need a prescription from a vet and must either email or upload a copy or have the online retailer contact the practice first.
That, analysts say, offers the practices a chance to sell the first batch on site and then direct customers to their own online service.
Kristen Cook, a practice manager at the Belton Veterinary Clinic in Belton, Texas, says their doctors have no obligation to write a prescription for those shopping elsewhere and the clinic’s policy is to handle prescriptions internally.
“It’s not something like I am handing them a piece of paper to take it wherever they want to take it,” Cook said.
The stakes are high.
Cook said that at least half of the clinic’s revenue comes from prescription drug sales.
Nationally, pharmacy sales on average make up about a third of a practice’s revenue, according to Gary Glassman, partner at accounting and financial services firm Burzenski & Company, which serves veterinary practices across the country.
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) says, however, that 40 states have already adopted laws, regulations or guidelines that specifically or implicitly require veterinarians to provide a written prescription upon request in some circumstances.
To see the summary report from AVMA, please click here here
This means pet owners could fill those prescriptions with Chewy or other online providers, and the market is just too attractive to e-commerce players for the vets and their partners to get complacent, analysts say.
According to a 2018 TD Ameritrade online survey of U.S. millennial pet owners, they were willing to spend up to $2,000 on average if their pet got sick, with dog owners prepared to spend more on their pets than what they expected to spend on their own healthcare.
“People are treating their pets more like people,” William Blair analyst John Kreger said. “Historically ... you’d frankly euthanize the pet when they started to have some of these chronic conditions. That’s just not happening now.”
Reporting by Tamara Mathias and Manas Mishra in Bengaluru, Writing by Patrick Graham; Editing by Tomasz Janowski
