Year: 2014

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) – Gilead Sciences’ expensive new hepatitis C pill has been endorsed for use in certain patients by Britain’s healthcare cost-effectiveness watchdog, after the U.S. firm provided more information. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) had told Gilead in June to come back with more data to support the use of Sovaldi, a drug whose sky-high U.S. price of $1,000 (£599.4) per pill has sparked fierce debate over costly modern medicines. Carole Longson, director of the NICE Centre for Health Technology Evaluation, said on Friday it was now provisionally recommending Sovaldi, also known as sofosbuvir, as a cost-effective treatment for some people with chronic hepatitis C. Gilead welcomed the decision to endorse Sovaldi as part of a combination treatment regimen, which it said would potentially make the drug available for the majority of hepatitis C patients. The new drug is recommended for people chronically infected with certain strains, or genotypes, of the disease, which can cause liver cirrhosis and, in a small percentage of people, liver cancer.

By Piya Sinha-Roy and Eric Kelsey LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Robin Williams was suffering from the early stages of Parkinson's disease along with severe depression at the time of his apparent suicide, his widow said on Thursday, drawing public attention to the correlation between the diseases. Although the gifted comedian had spoken before about his depression, Parkinson's experts have noted how the incurable and debilitating nervous system disorder that causes tremors and slowness of movement also affects people emotionally. "The neurochemicals that are impacted by Parkinson's disease and the pathways that control motor functions are also integrally involved in the control of mood," said Dr. Irene Richard, a neurology professor at the University of Rochester in New York. More than half of those who suffer from Parkinson's also experience clinical depression, according to the National Parkinson Foundation, which advises all Parkinson's patients to be screened for depression.

For only the third time in its 66-year history, the World Health Organization has declared a global public health emergency. This time it is for the Ebola outbreak in the three West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. After their traumatic ordeal in recent months, governments and communities in those three countries are…

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An experimental vaccine being developed by U.S. government scientists to prevent the painful mosquito-borne viral disease chikungunya has shown promise in its first human trials but remains years away from approval for widespread use. In a study published on Thursday in the Lancet medical journal, National Institutes of Health scientists said the vaccine elicited an impressive immune response in all 25 adult volunteers who took part and caused no worrisome side effects. “We believe it is a highly promising vaccine given how well tolerated it was and how robust the immune responses were,” said the leader of the study, Dr. Julie Ledgerwood of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The early-stage clinical trial involved 25 healthy American volunteers ages 18 to 50 years old who were given one of three dosage levels of the vaccine in three injections over a 20-week period.

By Christina Farr and Malathi Nayak SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A group of ex-gaming industry executives say they can use their design chops to solve a major health challenge: Sick patients neglecting to take their medication and costing employers and insurance providers billions of dollars. Jason Oberfest began thinking about applying game design tricks to complex medical problems in 2011, while at mobile game company ngmoco. Oberfest built the app to engage users in their health, but he maintained some of the most viral aspects of mobile games, such as gifts, and a feature to see how friends are faring in their treatment. An analysis in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that Americans are failing to comply with prescriptions and it is costing the U.S. health system between $100 billion and $289 billion annually.

By Tom Polansek CHICAGO (Reuters) – A research study has shown for the first time that livestock feed can carry a virus that has killed about 13 percent of the U.S. hog herd, the study’s lead author said, confirming suspicions among farmers and veterinarians battling outbreaks. The findings, published this month in the peer-reviewed BMC Veterinary Research journal, bring increased scrutiny on the feed industry in the fight against Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus, or PEDv. In the study, researchers collected feed residue from three farms in Iowa and Minnesota that had outbreaks of PEDv and had received feed from the same source. They fed it to five piglets in an experiment at South Dakota State University, and all became infected with the virus.

A candidate vaccine against the joint disease chikungunya, endemic to Africa and south Asia but moving north- and westward, showed promise by provoking an immune response in human trials, its developers said Friday. The trial drug is made with nanoparticles that resemble a West African strain of the virus, which causes high fever and intensely painful arthritis, said a study in The Lancet medical journal. These virus-like particles (VLPs) are meant to mimic the immune-stimulating effects of the actual virus particles, but cannot cause disease as they contain no viral DNA. "All injections were well tolerated, with no serious adverse events reported," wrote the authors of the study conducted in 25 healthy human volunteers from the United States, aged 18 to 50.

An Arizona math teacher arrived drunk at her high school and hit the bottle again in the classroom, where she yelled at her students before one of the pupils alerted administrators, authorities said on Thursday. Kathleen Jardine, 57, a teacher at Poston Butte High School faces one count of public consumption of alcohol stemming from the incident on Wednesday in the community about 35 miles southeast of Phoenix, said Sergeant Pat Ramirez, a spokesman for the Pinal County Sheriff's Office. Ramirez said a student called the main office to alert them that Jardine appeared drunk and was yelling at the students.

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — There is evidence the numbers of dead and sickened by Ebola in West Africa may “vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak,” the World Health Organization said Thursday. The U.N. health agency said it was prepared for the crisis to continue for months.

A diet that's contributed to James' nearly 15-pound weight loss. … and high-fat ketogenic diet, which requires them to swap (most) carbs with healthy, … "When you remove anything [from your diet], not to mention a whole food group, …

While saturated fat in moderate amounts is part of many healthy foods, such as olive oil and fish, trans fats should be avoided completely, Willett says.