Month: December 2013

(Reuters) – U.S. regulators on Friday approved Gilead Sciences Inc’s Sovaldi as a potentially easier cure for chronic infection with the liver-destroying hepatitis C virus. The once-a-day pill is the first approved to treat certain types of hepatitis C infection without the need for interferon, an injected drug that can cause severe flu-like symptoms. Hepatitis C, which is often undiagnosed, affects about 3.2 million Americans, killing more than 15,000 each year, mostly from illnesses such as cirrhosis and liver cancer. Most patients will be treated with the $1,000-a-day drug for 12 weeks, resulting in a total list price of $84,000, according to Gilead spokeswoman Cara Miller.

As millions of people shop online for new insurance plans under President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law, about 10 percent of applications to the main website are not being accurately transmitted, a government spokeswoman said on Friday. Last week, the White House wrapped up a five-week emergency effort to fix the most obvious of the website's technical problems and between midnight on Sunday and noon on Friday, government health officials said 3.7 million people visited. HealthCare.gov relays information about new customers in so-called "834" transaction forms to the private insurance companies that provide the health plans. "We believe nine of 10 transactions are being successfully transmitted," the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, spokeswoman Julie Bataille said at a news briefing.

By Miguel Gutierrez MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Six men suspected of stealing a dangerous radioactive cargo from a truck outside Mexico City earlier this week have been treated in a hospital for signs of radiation exposure and remain under police guard, officials said on Friday. On Monday, thieves hijacked the truck that had been carrying cobalt-60, a radioactive substance used for medical and industrial applications that can also be used as an ingredient in a "dirty bomb." Police located the truck on Wednesday but found that the robbers had removed the radioactive material from a protective case, exposing themselves to dangerous levels of radiation, before dumping it less than a mile away. Pedro Noble, the health secretary of the state of Hidalgo, told local television the men showed signs of "critical, close contact" with radioactive material. The truck, which was taking the material from a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a radioactive waste-storage center, was seized when its driver stopped at a gas station in the town of Temascalapa, 35 km (22 miles) northeast of Mexico City.

(Reuters) – U.S. regulators on Friday approved Gilead Sciences Inc’s Sovaldi, also known as sofosbuvir, as a potential cure for chronic infection with the liver-destroying hepatitis C virus. The once-a-day pill is the first approved to treat certain types of hepatitis C infection without the need for interferon, an injected drug that can cause severe flu-like symptoms. Hepatitis C, which is often undiagnosed, affects about 3.2 million Americans, killing more than 15,000 each year, mostly from illnesses such as cirrhosis and liver cancer. Most patients will be treated with the $7,000-a-week drug for 12 weeks, resulting in a total price of $84,000, according to Gilead spokeswoman Cara Miller.

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The diagnosis is made when an individual works a nontraditional shift, feels sleepiness as a result, and this sleepiness impacts the work life or home life in some negative way. The commuter train crash reads like a primer illustrating the finer points of shift work disorder.

By Barbara Liston ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) – A Florida researcher is preparing to test massive dust storms in the upper atmosphere that roll in from Africa to see whether pathogens raining down on the state could be responsible for plant, animal or human disease. University of Florida aerobiologist Andrew Schuerger said his air sampling device mounted under the wing of an F-104 Starfighter jet is the first capable of capturing particles directly from the clouds which drop 50 million metric tons of dust a year on U.S. soil. The effort will be the most in-depth yet to test the health risks of the dust clouds which cross the Atlantic in summer, according to Scheurger. A few previous studies of small samples collected at ground level suggest the presence of Bacillus megaterium, Serratia liquefaciens, and species of Streptomyces and Pseudomonas, all of which are potential plant or human pathogens.

The active ingredients in the little blue pill could have another purpose: Providing relief for women affected by severe menstrual cramps, a small new study suggests. Researchers from the Penn State College of Medicine found that when sildenafil citrate, more commonly known as Viagra, was applied vaginally to women plagued by severe menstrual cramps, they experienced pain relief compared with placebo. Sildenafil citrate is currently used as a drug to treat erectile dysfunction in men. …

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health officials have approved a highly anticipated hepatitis C drug from Gilead Sciences Inc. that is expected to offer a faster, more palatable cure to millions of people infected with the liver-destroying virus.