Roche's combo lymphoma treatment wins U.S. FDA approval

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FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss drugmaker Roche is seen at its headquarters in Basel, Switzerland February 1, 2018. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

(This June 10 story deletes paragraph 9 to clarify that retreatment with Polivy has not been studied.)

(Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday granted earlier-than-expected approval to Roche Holding AG’s antibody- Polivy for treatment of patients with advanced lymphoma.

Polivy was approved in combination with Roche’s older drug Rituxan and a chemotherapy agent for adult patients with advanced diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) whose cancer has worsened despite at least two previous lines of therapy.

Antibody-drug conjugates are designed to deliver a toxic chemotherapy directly to tumors. Roche said the average U.S. list price for a four-month course of Polivy would be $90,000. Rituxan is priced at $39,500 for four months.

Wall Street analysts estimate Polivy sales at nearly $1 billion by 2024, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Side effects seen in studies of Polivy included low blood cell counts, nerve damage, fatigue and pneumonia, the FDA said in a statement.

Cell therapies Yescarta, from Gilead Sciences Inc and Kymriah, sold by Novartis AG, are also approved for patients with advanced DLBCL.

Dr. Matthew Matasar, a hematologist at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who was involved in the development of Polivy, said the drug could be an option for some patients to try before determining whether they need to move on to CAR-T treatments.

Roche estimates that nearly 25,000 new cases of DLBCL, a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), will be diagnosed in the United States this year. NHL, which is one of the most common cancers, accounts for about 4% of all types of cancers in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society. Continued approval for the treatment may depend on data from a confirmatory trial, Roche said. The FDA’s accelerated approval program allows conditional approval of a medicine that fills an unmet medical need for a serious condition.

Reporting by Aakash Jagadeesh Babu in Bengaluru and Deena Beasley in Los Angeles; Editing by James Emmanuel and Lisa Shumaker

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Health Canada to allow some edible cannabis products starting mid-December

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FILE PHOTO: Cannabis plants fill a room in an aquaponics grow operation by licensed marijuana producer Green Relief in Flamborough, Ontario, Canada January 25, 2019. Picture taken January 25, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio

(Reuters) - Health Canada said on Friday that some edible cannabis products, extracts and topicals would be sold in physical or online stores from mid-December.

The amended cannabis regulations will come into force on Oct. 17, the health regulator said, adding that cannabis producers with federal license will need to provide a 60-day notice of their intent to sell new products, as they are currently required to do.

“We think these new product forms are going to accelerate the shift away from black market into the legal market,” said Martin Landry, chief of corporate development & strategy at Neptune Wellness Solutions Inc. The Canadian firm specializes in the extraction, purification and formulation of cannabis products.

“They are critical for the legal market to capture a bigger part of the consumer spending,” Landry said.

The amendments will also limit the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the substance in cannabis that makes people high, to 10 milligrams per serving in cannabis edibles and extracts. For cannabis topicals, the limit will be 1 gram of THC per package.

The Ontario Chamber of Commerce said even though the new proposed regulations will allow for the development of a range of products to meet consumer demand, the industry body was disappointed to see that multi-packs for edibles cannot exceed 10 mg of THC per package.

The OCC in a recent report had said it supports a THC limit of 10-mg per discrete unit of edibles, as well as the sale of multi-packs or multiple products up to a maximum of 100-mg of THC per package.

Ontario is home to more than half the licensed producers of recreational cannabis in Canada and a majority of employment.

Last year, Canada became one of the first major economies to legalize recreational marijuana, a move that has led to the creation of a multi-billion dollar industry.

Reporting by Shradha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Maju Samuel

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U.S. drugmakers file lawsuit against requiring drug prices in TV ads

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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

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U.S. drugmakers file lawsuit against rule requiring drug prices in TV ads

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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

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Canada's health regulator says some cannabis products to launch mid December

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FILE PHOTO: Cannabis plants fill a room in an aquaponics grow operation by licensed marijuana producer Green Relief in Flamborough, Ontario, Canada January 25, 2019. Picture taken January 25, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio

(Reuters) - Health Canada said on Friday that some edible cannabis products, extracts and topicals will be sold in physical or online stores from mid December.

The amended Cannabis regulations will come into force on October 17, the regulator said, adding that cannabis producers with federal license will need to provide 60-days notice of their intent to sell new products, as they are currently required to do.

The amendments will also limit the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the substance in cannabis that makes people high, to 10 milligrams per serving in cannabis edibles and extracts. For cannabis topicals, the limit will be 1 gram of THC per package.

Last year, Canada became one of the first major economies to legalize recreational marijuana, a move that has led to the creation of a multi-billion dollar industry.

Reporting by Shradha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli

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Listening to music may ease cancer patients' pain

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(Reuters Health) - Listening to music at home may reduce cancer patients’ pain and fatigue and ease symptoms like loss of appetite and difficulty concentrating, according to research in Taiwan.

In the study, breast cancer patients assigned to 30 minutes of music listening five times a week had “noticeably” reduced side effects of cancer and its treatment over 24 weeks, researchers report in the European Journal of Cancer Care.

The patients said the music helped their physical and psychological wellbeing because it distanced them from negative thoughts about cancer.

“Music therapy is convenient, does not involve invasive procedures, and can easily be used by people in the comfort of their homes,” said senior study author Kuei-Ru Chou of Taipei Medical University.

“Home-based music interventions can also be used with no cost,” Chou told Reuters Health by email. “Healthcare services have become expensive in the present time.”

The researchers recruited 60 breast cancer patients and randomly assigned half of them to a group that would listen to music at home on an MP3 player provided by the study team with a selection of classical, parlor, popular, Taiwanese and religious music to choose from. The other patients were also given a player and the same instructions about how often to listen, but their selections were various types of ambient music, mainly consisting of environmental sounds, which research has shown does little to reduce pain or symptoms, the study team notes.

Before the women had surgery, and after six, 12 and 24 weeks of music listening, all patients rated the severity of 25 physical symptoms on a five-point scale, as well as rating five categories of fatigue on a separate five-point scale, and the level of pain they felt on a 100-point scale.

The average symptom severity scores of the music therapy group had dropped by five points at the six-week assessment, seven points at 12 weeks and nearly nine points after 24 weeks. Pain scores and overall fatigue scores fell at each assessment as well.

For those listening to music, physical and mental fatigue had also dropped at six weeks but not later.

In contrast, pain and symptom severity scores in the control group increased and remained higher than at the start of the trial.

Based on the results, music therapy may not relieve long-term physical and mental fatigue, the study authors caution. And future studies should use objective measures of pain and fatigue, in addition to the subjective measures used in this study, Chou said.

The researchers are also interested in learning how and why music therapy reduces symptoms and pain. Because listening to music promotes endorphins, dopamine and serotonin in the brain, the chemicals may spark joy and positive emotions that distract patients from the negative emotions, the study authors speculate.

Music could affect functions of the cardiovascular, respiratory, muscular, skeletal, nervous and metabolic systems as well, relieving muscle tension and pain, they add.

“From the neurophysiological point of view,” said Tereza Alcantara-Silva of the Federal University of Goias in Brazil, music-evoked emotions can modulate activity in a variety of brain areas.

“Music plays a major role in self-regulation of emotional contexts,” said Alcantara-Silva, who wasn’t involved in the study, by email. “Music therapy can bring several benefits to cancer patients, helping them to find ways to deal with stress, fear, and loneliness.”

SOURCE: bit.ly/2Idu5cY European Journal of Cancer Care, online June 5, 2019.

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Experimental mobile app helps manage migraines

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(Reuters Health) - A smartphone-based relaxation app could help migraine sufferers reduce the number of headaches they get each month, a small study suggests.

Using the app twice a week was associated with an average of four fewer headache days per month, according to the report in Nature Digital Medicine.

“Migraine is now the second most disabling condition in terms of disability-adjusted years lost,” said lead author Dr. Mia Minen of NYU Langone Health in New York City.

Migraines affect about 1 in 6 adults in the U.S., with women most at risk.

“Previous research has shown that the best treatment for preventing migraine is a combination of migraine medication and behavioral therapy,” Minen told Reuters Health by email. However, “patients have significant difficulty accessing these safe, top evidence-based treatments.”

Minen and colleagues created RELAXaHEAD, an app based on the technique of progressive muscle relaxation, a proven method of migraine prevention, the authors note. The study team analyzed whether patients recruited from a neurology clinic would use the app regularly and whether they’d have fewer headache days.

During the study, 51 patients in their 30s and 40s who typically had 13 or more headache days per month were asked to complete a daily headache diary and to do progressive muscle relaxation with the app for 20 minutes a day for 90 days. Nearly one third of the participants were considered to have severe migraine disability when they enrolled, meaning they had missed considerable amounts of work, school and family activities due to the headaches.

On average, participants used the app on 22 days per month, for about 11 minutes per day. Roughly half used it once per week and a third used it two or more times per week. Overall, those who used the app twice per week had four fewer headache days the following month, and those who used it once per week had two fewer headaches days. Use of the app tended to drop over time.

Patients with higher depression scores were less likely to use the daily headache diary, and those with higher anxiety scores were more likely to use it.

“The number of mobile health apps available in the iOS and Google Play stores has ballooned, and recent studies show that most people download an app but then rarely use it,” Minen said. “Importantly, we were able to get a considerable number of study participants to use the app.”

The researchers have received inquiries about the app from patients with migraines outside the NYU Langone system, she noted. Although it was created as a research tool, Minen’s team is exploring ways to expand access to the app or include it in office visits. They’re also studying whether the app can help healthcare providers who don’t know where to refer patients with migraines who want behavioral therapy.

“I would encourage people who live with migraines to consider a behavioral treatment,” said Alice Pressman of Sutter Health in Walnut Creek, California, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“The great thing about starting a (behavioral therapy) BT is that you don’t have to stop your other treatments if you feel they are effective,” Pressman said by email. “BTs can be used as add-ons with no added side effects.”

However, an in-person a mindfulness-based stress reduction program targeting migraines that was offered at her center was difficult for some patients to attend due to time and location, Pressman said, so an online program may help. At the same time, patients should know that apps are still new and not fully studied.

“Research here is important to enable therapeutically effective and safe smartphone apps. Lots of apps are offered that are not based on any scientific evidence,” said Thomas Dresler of the University of Tuebingen in Germany, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“There are a lot of migraine apps out there, but customers need to know that the availability of an app per se does not guarantee effectiveness, safety or the developers’ adherence to specific quality standards,” Dresler said by email.

SOURCE: bit.ly/2X9Iwa1 Nature Digital Medicine, online June 4, 2019.

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Death toll from UK hospital listeria outbreak rises to five

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LONDON (Reuters) - The number of people to die from a listeria outbreak in British hospitals has risen to five from three, Public Health England (PHE) said on Friday.

The agency said that since the outbreak it had reviewed earlier cases and established that one other death had also been linked to the infection, which is thought to stem from sandwiches and salads. One patient who had been seriously ill has also since died, taking the number to five.

“To date, there have been no patients linked to this incident outside healthcare organizations, but we continue to investigate,” said PHE’s Nick Phin. “Swift action was taken to protect patients and any risk to the public is low.

Reporting by Kate Holton; editing by Stephen Addison

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Pharmacies may not stock naloxone, despite statewide orders

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(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

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Got an antibiotic prescription from your dentist? Chances are, it might be unnecessary

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(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

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Enanta's lung infection therapy succeeds in mid-stage trial

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(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

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WHO likely to declare Ebola an international emergency: experts

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GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) should and is likely to declare an international emergency over the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has now spread to Uganda, experts said as a WHO advisory panel met on Friday.

A health worker wearing Ebola protection gear enters the Biosecure Emergency Care Unit (CUBE) at the ALIMA (The Alliance for International Medical Action) Ebola treatment centre in Beni, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, April 1, 2019. Picture taken April 1, 2019.REUTERS/Baz Ratner

Congo’s epidemic is the second worst worldwide since West Africa’s Ebola outbreak in 2014-16, with 2,084 cases and 1,405 deaths since being declared in August. The WHO said on Thursday that two people had died in Uganda having arrived with the disease from Congo.

A panel of 13 independent medical experts on the WHO’s Emergency Committee (EC) were meeting from midday to evaluate the latest evidence and whether the epidemic constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

Such a decision would lead to boosting public health measures, funding and resources, and could include recommendations on trade and travel, academic experts and aid groups said.

“Will @WHO declare global emergency for #Ebola? I predict yes. My sense is @DrTedros will call PHEIC if #EC recs it. He understands depth of crisis,” Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University Law School in Washington, D.C., who is not on the panel, said in a tweet.

People are still dying outside of Ebola treatment centers - exposing their families to the disease - and many don’t appear on lists of known contacts being monitored, he said.

“Vaccines alone can’t work if community hides cases due to distrust. Violence persists. We are in this for the long haul,” Gostin said, referring to deadly attacks on Congo health facilities.

The panel, which twice before decided not to declare an emergency, will make recommendations to WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who takes the final decision.

Only 4 emergencies have been declared in the past decade: the H1 virus that caused an influenza pandemic (2009), West Africa’s Ebola outbreak, polio (2014) and Zika virus (2016).

SECOND WORST EPIDEMIC

Top WHO official Mike Ryan said on Thursday there had been no known person-to-person spread of Ebola in Uganda and that there were encouraging signs in Congo, with the disease’s spread slowing in cities of Butembo and Katwa. However it the virus was now entrenched in rural areas including Mabalako, he said.

“But these can be very volatile, these can go up and down week to week. So we have to be careful looking at one week of data and declaring victory.

“We have a hell of a long way to go in this response,” he told Reuters.

The WHO, in a statement overnight, said that given all three confirmed cases in Uganda belong to a single family cluster, the level of preparedness and experience of Ugandan authorities to manage previous Ebola outbreaks, and their rapid detection of cases in a limited geographical area, “the overall level of risk at national level is assessed as moderate”.

“However, the overall regional risk posed by the outbreak in DRC remains very high. The overall risk at international level remains low,” it said.

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global medical charity, said the WHO should declare a public health emergency of international concern.

“Doing so would raise the levels of international political support, which has been seriously lacking so far, show strong support for DRC and neighboring countries and WHO, and release more resources, including finance, healthcare workers, enhanced logistics, security and infrastructure,” he said.

Additional reporting by Kate Kelland in London; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky

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Indonesia cracks down on online tobacco ads to deter young smokers

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FILE PHOTO: An Indonesian youth holds a cigarette while waiting for a train in Jakarta May 24, 2012. REUTERS/Beawiharta/File Photo

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia, the world’s fourth biggest producer of cigarettes, will crack down on online tobacco advertisements in a bid to target youthful smokers, the communication minister said on Thursday.

Health groups say more teenagers are taking to smoking in Indonesia, which already has nationwide curbs on cigarette ads, including a ban on sponsors’ promotion of tobacco products, though it is not consistently enforced by regional authorities.

The minister said he had given orders for his team to block all online cigarette advertisements after the health minister sought the ban.

“Immediately after receiving the letter, Minister of Communication and Information Rudiantara gives direction to cull cigarette advertising content on the internet,” the ministry said in a statement.

The minister, who uses only one name, like many Indonesians, said his team had already found content on 114 social media channels, including Facebook, Instagram and Youtube, that violated the law and would now be blocked.

“We hope by blocking cigarette advertisements on the internet we can reduce the smoking prevalence, especially among children,” Health Minister Nila Moelek said, according to the Jakarta Post newspaper.

“Three out of four teenagers know about cigarette advertising from online media.”

Media in Indonesia, which is famed for its “kretek” or clove cigarettes, cited health survey data that showed the prevalence of smoking aged those aged 10 to 18 had increased to 9.1 percent last year from 7.2 percent in 2013.

About two-thirds of Indonesian men smoke tobacco daily, and more than 21 percent of boys between 13 and 15 smoked cigarettes regularly, the World Health Organization said in 2017.

Reporting by Cindy Silviana and Fanny Potkin; Editing by Clarence Fernandez

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Father's smoking during pregnancy tied to asthma in kids

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(Reuters Health) - Children who are exposed to tobacco smoke from their fathers while they’re in the womb may be more likely than those who are not to develop asthma by age 6, according to a study of chemical changes to DNA.

While prenatal smoke exposure has long been linked to an increased risk of childhood asthma, the current study offers fresh evidence that it’s not just a pregnant mother’s smoking that can cause harm.

Researchers followed 756 babies for six years. Almost one in four were exposed to tobacco by fathers who smoked while the child was developing in the womb; only three mothers smoked.

Overall, 31% of kids with fathers who smoked during pregnancy developed asthma by age 6, compared with 23% of kids without fathers who smoked, the study found.

Asthma was also more common among kids whose fathers were heavier smokers, senior study author Dr. Kuender Yang of the National Defense Medical Center in Taipei said by email.

“Children with prenatal paternal tobacco smoke exposure corresponding to more than 20 cigarettes per day had a significantly higher risk of developing asthma than those with less than 20 cigarettes per day and those without prenatal paternal tobacco smoke exposure,” Yang said.

About 35% of the kids with fathers who were heavier smokers developed asthma, compared with 25% of children with fathers who were lighter smokers and 23% of kids with fathers who didn’t smoke at all during pregnancy.

Smoking by fathers during pregnancy was also associated with changes in methylation - a chemical code along the DNA strand that influences gene activity - on portions of genes involved in immune system function and the development of asthma.

Researchers extracted infants’ DNA from cord blood immediately after birth and examined methylation along the DNA strand. The more fathers smoked during pregnancy, the more methylation increased on stretches of three specific genes that play a role in immune function.

Children who had the greatest methylation increases at birth, affecting all three of these genes, had up to almost twice the risk of having asthma by age 6 as other kids in the study.

While smoking by fathers during pregnancy was linked to childhood asthma, it didn’t appear to impact children’s sensitivity to allergens or total levels of IgE, an antibody associated with asthma.

This suggests that the risk of asthma from tobacco exposure is unlike allergic asthma, which is driven by allergies or allergic sensitization via IgE antibody, said Dr. Avni Joshi, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic Children’s Center in Rochester, Minnesota, who wasn’t involved in the study.

The study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how prenatal smoking exposure might directly cause so-called epigenetic changes, or how those changes cause asthma in children.

It’s not yet clear how the alterations seen along the DNA strand where methylation increased might cause asthma, the study team notes in Frontiers in Genetics.

Still, the message to parents should be clear, Joshi said by email.

“Smoking is bad at ANY point in time: before the baby is born and after the baby is born,” Joshi said. “Many parents defer quitting until the baby is born, but this study stresses that the prenatal exposure to tobacco creates changes to the unborn child’s immune system, hence it is best to quit as a family decides to have children, even before the conception happens.”

SOURCE: bit.ly/2WG9lhM Frontiers in Genetics, online May 31, 2019.

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Prosecutors drop Flint, Michigan water charges over 'flawed' probe

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(Reuters) - Michigan prosecutors on Thursday dropped all criminal charges over the deadly contamination of the city of Flint’s water, saying a more thorough investigation was needed before they could proceed with the case.

FILE PHOTO: Volunteers distribute bottled water to help combat the effects of the crisis when the city's drinking water became contaminated with dangerously high levels of lead in Flint, Michigan, March 5, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo

The charges were brought by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), a federal prosecutorial agency, and were based on an investigation that state prosecutors described as “flawed.”

“Dismissing these cases allows us to move forward according to the non-negotiable requirements of a thorough, methodical and ethical investigation,” Michigan’s Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement.

Eight former state and city officials, including Michigan’s chief medical officer Eden Wells, faced criminal charges for their roles in the water crisis which killed 12 people and sickened over 70, one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in U.S. history.

According to the prosecutors, the OSC made agreements that gave law firms representing state agencies and officials a role in deciding what information would be turned over to law enforcement during their investigation. As a result, not all evidence was pursued, they said.

Additional investigation by the prosecution team has already identified more individuals of interest in the case, they said.

Flint’s troubles began in 2014 after the city switched its water supply to the Flint River from Lake Huron to cut costs. Corrosive river water caused lead to leach from pipes, contaminating the drinking water and causing an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease.

Prosecutors said they dropped charges “without prejudice,” meaning they could be brought again once a new investigation is completed.

“Justice delayed is not always justice denied,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement.

But Michigan Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, a Democrat who represents Flint, expressed his disappointment.

“Months of investigation have turned into years, and the only thing to show for it is a bunch of lawyers who have gotten rich off the taxpayers’ dime,” he said in a statement. “The people of Flint believe that they will never see justice, and sadly, so far they’ve been proven right.”

The U.S. Supreme Court in March allowed two class-action lawsuits filed by Flint residents, who are pursuing civil rights claims against local and state officials.

Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Bill Tarrant and James Dalgleish

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Brazil's Minerva suspends furlough at beef plant as China ban ends

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SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian meat processor Minerva SA said on Thursday it has suspended a furlough announced last week for its Barretos beef processing facility, following news that a ban to exports to China has ended.

Brazil’s government said on Thursday it has lifted a suspension of beef exports to China after dealing with an atypical case of mad cow disease.

Reporting by Gabriela Mello and Marcelo Teixeira; Editing by Phil Berlowitz

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Mesh implants work for bladder leakage, long-term safety unclear

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(Reuters Health) - Several different types of mesh implant surgery may be effective for treating bladder leaks, but the long-term safety and effectiveness of the procedures isn’t yet clear, a new analysis suggests.

Researchers examined data from 175 clinical trials that randomly assigned a total of 21,598 women with stress urinary incontinence to receive different types of surgical treatments.

Over the short-term, three types of surgeries appeared most effective at curing the incontinence. Two newer procedures using slings to support the bladder had cure rates of about 89% and an older abdominal surgery to suture the bladder had a cure rate of about 77%.

“With regard to surgical treatments, there is limited evidence to suggest that there is one ‘best’ option for the treatment of stress urinary incontinence. Rather there are several trade-offs and risks that women need to be aware of and consider alongside their clinician when making their treatment choice,” said study co-author Dawn Craig of Newcastle University in the UK.

“Based on our findings, the jury is still out on the long-term risks of vaginal mesh for stress urinary incontinence,” Craig said by email.

Up to half of adult women experience stress urinary incontinence, when the pelvic floor muscles are too weak to support the bladder. As a result, urine leaks during coughing, sneezing or exercise. Childbirth is a common reason for weak pelvic muscles, and obesity worsens the problem.

Surgical treatment for stress urinary incontinence has evolved over the past two decades from open abdominal operations to support the bladder with sutures to less invasive procedures that insert mesh slings instead. Recently, however, the safety of mesh implants for stress incontinence has come under scrutiny due to reports of severe complications, litigation and product withdrawals, researchers note in The BMJ.

One of the more effective mesh sling options in the study was a traditional suburethral sling, which involves placing a sling under the urethra and using one of a variety of techniques to secure it in place.

The other mesh sling option with similar effectiveness was the midurethral sling, a newer minimally-invasive procedure that enables surgeons to insert a narrow strip of synthetic mesh without the need to secure it in place.

In contrast, the older type of surgery known as an open coloposuspension requires cutting through the abdomen to reach the bladder and then using sutures to support the neck of the bladder, the group of muscles that connect the bladder to the urethra. These muscles tighten to hold urine in the bladder and relax to release urine.

Most of the available safety data was for the newer mesh sling procedures.

Mesh procedures done with one vaginal incision and two groin or thigh incisions - known as transobturator midurethral sling surgery - had more repeat surgeries and groin pain but fewer vascular complications, bladder or urethral perforations, or voiding difficulties than so-called retropubic midurethral surgery done with one vaginal incision and two abdominal incisions.

“We do not have good long-term follow up data for any of these surgeries as the trials analyzed lasted up to five years at most and mesh can cause problems many years after insertion,” said Rufus Cartwright of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust in the UK, who co-authored an accompanying editorial.

Some women might be able to address stress urinary incontinence without surgery, previous research has found. Lifestyle changes like avoiding caffeine, drinking small amounts of fluid, using the bathroom at scheduled times throughout the day and doing exercises that target the pelvic floor muscles can improve bladder control.

“Women should consider surgery for incontinence if their symptoms are severely affecting their quality of life, and they haven’t responded to conservative treatment (pelvic floor exercises),” Cartwright said by email. “The choice between the different procedures should be based on a process of shared decision making with the surgeon.”

SOURCE: bit.ly/31w78Jv and bit.ly/2KeSIIt The BMJ, online June 5, 2019.

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Female soldiers wanting to suppress periods face barriers

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(Reuters Health) - Military women wanting to stop menstruating while they are deployed may face a number of barriers, a new commentary suggests.

The majority of surveyed military women say they would like to suppress menstruation during deployment but very few are doing so, according to the paper in Obstetrics & Gynecology that explores why more military women are not accessing that option.

One answer may be that not enough military women and their health providers even know that hormonal contraceptives used continuously will suppress menstruation.

“Women are counseled to stop taking contraceptives before deployment and that negates all the valuable health benefits, including suppression, that come with them,” said the commentary’s author, Sheena Eagan, an assistant professor at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, and a specialist in military medicine ethics. “There’s a recurring theme in surveys: women want to access cycle control and they want to suppress menstruation before they are deployed.”

Unfortunately, there are many barriers blocking women’s access to menses suppression in the military, Eagan said, including the instructions to stop taking contraceptives before deployment because there is a rule against sexual intercourse while deployed. “I wanted to highlight the misconception I saw throughout the literature that equates contraceptive use with pregnancy prevention,” she said.

After reviewing the medical literature on the topic of menses suppression in the military, Eagan found that 66% to 86% of women surveyed wanted the ability to stop menstruating during deployment. In contrast, a mere 7% reported having done so.

Part of the problem may be lack of education among both the women and their health providers, Eagan said. A 2009 report found that only a third of service women had received any pre-deployment counseling on menstrual regulation and suppression. Moreover, nearly 70% of women reported that their primary healthcare providers were medics or corpsmen. Although training varies depending on the branch of service, these types of providers normally do not hold professional or graduate degrees, Eagan noted.

Eagan said she isn’t suggesting that menses suppression be mandated for all female soldiers, but “it should be part of women’s autonomous choice.”

The issues of menses regulation and control aren’t limited to military women, said Dr. Charles Ascher-Walsh, director of gynecology for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. “Obviously, when women are deployed it’s more convenient not to be menstruating,” he said. “But there are many women who would have the same kinds of benefits, such as when they are traveling for work.”

In general, Ascher-Walsh said, “there’s a lack of education among women and their doctors that this is a possibility - and a safe possibility. And doctors don’t offer it as much as I think they should.”

Still, the article may have made the process sound more straightforward than it sometimes is, Ascher-Walsh said. “It’s not as simple as: do this and you are guaranteed not to bleed,” he explained.

That’s because not all women will stop cycling on hormonal contraceptives, Ascher-Walsh said. With some methods, “you can end up with spotting every day and that’s worse than having your period,” he added. “So you don’t want to do it right before you are deployed since that can make it worse rather than better.”

The best option if a female soldier wants to try a method to halt menstruation is to experiment with it well before deployment, Ascher-Walsh said. Among the possible options, continuous birth control is “the most likely to stop a woman’s periods and be reliable,” Ascher-Walsh said.

SOURCE: bit.ly/2F89nsS Obstetrics & Gynecology, online June 11, 2019.

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Family sent back to DR Congo after two die of Ebola in Uganda

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KAMPALA (Reuters) - Authorities repatriated the relatives of two people who died of Ebola in Uganda back to the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday, including a 3-year-old boy confirmed to be suffering from the disease, the Ugandan health minister said.

A health worker checks the temperature of a woman as she crosses the Mpondwe border point separating Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of the ebola screening at the computerised Mpondwe Health Screening Facility in Mpondwe, Uganda June 13, 2019. REUTERS/Newton Nabwaya

The cases marked the first time the virus has crossed an international border since the current outbreak began in Congo last August. The epidemic has already killed 1,390 people in eastern Congo.

The family sent home on Thursday had crossed from Congo to Uganda earlier this week and sought treatment when a 5-year-old boy became unwell. He died of Ebola on Tuesday. His 50-year-old grandmother, who was accompanying them, died of the disease on Wednesday, the ministry said.

They were the first confirmed deaths in Uganda in the current Ebola outbreak.

The dead boy’s father, mother, 3-year-old brother and their 6-month-old baby, along with the family’s maid, were all repatriated, the minister’s statement said.

The 3-year-old has been confirmed to be infected with Ebola. His 23-year-old Ugandan father has displayed symptoms but tested negative, Ugandan authorities said.

“Uganda remains in Ebola response mode to follow up the 27 contacts (of the family),” the statement said.

Three other suspected Ebola cases not related to the family remain in isolation, the ministry said.

The viral disease spreads through contact with bodily fluids, causing hemorrhagic fever with severe vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding.

UGANDA PRECAUTIONS

Authorities in neighboring Uganda and South Sudan have been on high alert in case the disease spreads.

On Thursday, Uganda banned public gatherings in the Kasese district where the family crossed the border. Residents are also taking precautions, local journalist Ronald Kule told Reuters.

“They are a little alarmed now and they realize that the risk of catching Ebola is now real,” he said.

“Hand washing facilities have been put in place, with washing materials like JIK (bleach) and soap. There’s no shaking of hands, people just wave at each other.”

At the border, health workers checked lines of people and isolate one child with a raised temperature, a Reuters journalist said.

Uganda has already vaccinated many frontline health workers and is relatively well prepared to contain the virus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) sent 3,500 doses of a Merck experimental vaccine to Uganda this week, following 4,700 initial doses.

Dr. Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies program, said that he expected Uganda to approve the use of experimental therapeutic drug treatments, to be shipped “in coming days”.

Slideshow (9 Images) 

Monitoring and vaccination had been stepped up, but there had been “no panic reaction” so far to the cases there.

The WHO has said it will reconvene an emergency committee on Friday to decide whether the outbreak is an international public health emergency and how to manage it.

Authorities have struggled to contain the disease partly because health workers have been attacked nearly 200 times this year in conflict-hit eastern Congo, the epicenter of the outbreak.

Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Writing by Omar Mohammed and Katharine Houreld; Editing by Angus MacSwan

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Brazil lifts suspension of beef exports to China

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SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil’s government said on Thursday it has lifted a suspension of beef exports to China after dealing with an atypical case of mad cow disease, sending shares of Marfrig Global Foods, Minerva SA and other Brazilian meatpackers soaring.

The suspension had been in effect since June 3 after a case was reported in a 17-year-old cow in the state of Mato Grosso. Cases can arise spontaneously in cattle herds, usually in animals 8 years old or older.

Tereza Cristina Dias, the agriculture minister, said on her Twitter account that Brazil would resume issuance of international health certificates to allow for beef exports to China.

Marfrig, whose shares jumped 5% after the announcement of the end of the suspension, said in a securities filing that the government’s issuance of these certificates had been normalized on Thursday.

Shares of rival Minerva also rose 3% in São Paulo.

China is the only country among Brazilian importers that enforces a health protocol requiring suspension of beef imports when an atypical case of mad cow disease is reported, Brazil’s agriculture ministry said in a statement.

The ministry reiterated the Brazilian government’s intention to negotiate a new health protocol with Chinese authorities to address the issue.

Reporting by Ana Mano; Editing by Dan Grebler and Paul Simao

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