Month: March 2014

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new study gives a big boost to fixing a bad aortic valve, the heart's main gate, without open-heart surgery. Survival rates were better one year later for people who had a new valve placed through a tube into an artery instead.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new class of experimental medicines can dramatically lower cholesterol, raising hopes of a fresh option for people who can't tolerate or don't get enough help from Lipitor and other statin drugs that have been used for this for decades.

By Daniel Flynn and Saliou Samb DAKAR/CONAKRY (Reuters) – Senegal closed its land border with Guinea on Saturday to try to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus, which Guinean authorities say is suspected of killing 70 people in what would be the deadliest outbreak in seven years. The discovery of 11 people suspected to have died of Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia in recent days has stirred concern that one of the most lethal infectious diseases known to man could spread in a poor corner of West Africa, where health systems are ill-equipped to cope. Senegal’s Interior Ministry said it had closed the land border with Guinea in the southern region of Kolda and the southeastern region of Kedougou.

By Bill Berkrot and Ransdell Pierson WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Amgen Inc’s drug from a high profile new class of experimental medicines lowered “bad” LDL cholesterol by 55 percent to 66 percent compared with a placebo in a trio of late-stage clinical trials, according to data presented on Saturday. Amgen had previously said the drug, evolocumab, met the main goals of five late-stage trials involving some 4,000 patients by significantly outperforming placebo or another cholesterol medicine in a variety of patient populations. “We’re seeing excellent efficacy and the safety profile appears no different than placebo, so you can’t get better than that,” Dr. Michael Koren, one of the lead investigators on two of the evolocumab studies, said in a telephone interview.

By Gene Emery and Bill Berkrot PROVIDENCE, RI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Patients treated by renal artery denervation were no more likely to see their blood pressure decline than those who received a fake therapy in a major clinical trial, calling into question a therapy used in more than 80 countries to treat hypertension that doesn’t respond to drugs. The study was considered a key test of the intervention in which nerve connections between the heart and kidney were disrupted in an effort to lower blood pressure as prior trials did not include a blinded control group for efficacy comparison. Because earlier tests of the technique did not involve treating some patients with sham therapy, “placebo effect may well explain all or most of the blood pressure differences” in two key trials, known as SYMPLICITY HTM-1 and HTN-2. Boston Scientific Corp and St. Jude Medical Inc also make renal denervation equipment.

Gilead Sciences Inc, under fire for pricing a new hepatitis C drug at $1,000 a pill, has discount agreements with a number of health insurers, a company executive said in an interview. The medication, Sovaldi, has a list price of $84,000 for a 12-week course of therapy and is seen as a breakthrough in the treatment of the serious liver disease. On March 20, Democratic lawmakers led by California Representative Henry Waxman asked Gilead to explain the price tag, and a meeting with the company is scheduled for next week. Health insurers and state Medicaid programs for the poor are pushing for further discounts, fearing a multibillion-dollar pricetag from treating most hepatitis C sufferers with Sovaldi and similar new medicines likely to be approved in coming years.