Following is a summary of current health news briefs.
Nvidia deepens bets on AI in drug discovery with Recursion investment
Chip designer Nvidia will invest $50 million to speed up training of Recursion’s artificial intelligence models for drug discovery, the companies said on Wednesday, sending the biotech firm’s shares surging about 83%. Recursion, whose advisers include AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, will use its biological and chemical datasets exceeding 23,000 terabytes to train AI models on Nvidia’s cloud platform.
US FDA reviewing concerns over Logan Paul’s PRIME energy drink
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday it is reviewing concerns raised by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer against a popular influencer-created energy drink. Schumer said earlier this month that PRIME, a beverage brand started last year by YouTube stars Logan Paul and KSI, should be investigated due to the high caffeine content in the energy drink, adding that it was also being marketed to children.
Exclusive-Most patients using weight-loss drugs like Wegovy stop within a year, data show
Only about one-third of patients prescribed a popular weight-loss drug like Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy were still taking it a year later, while total healthcare costs for the group rose sharply, according to an analysis of U.S. pharmacy claims shared with Reuters. The annual cost of overall care for patients prior to taking Wegovy or a similar drug was $12,371, on average, according to the analysis. The full-year cost after starting the medication jumped by 59% to $19,657, on average.
Factbox-U.S. state abortion legislation to watch in 2023
State legislatures are wrestling with how much to restrict or expand abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. Here is a snapshot of pending and passed legislation seeking to restrict or protect access in 2023.
With 735 million people hungry, UN says world is ‘off track’ to meet its 2030 goal
About 735 million people worldwide faced chronic hunger in 2022, a figure much higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic and which threatens progress towards a global goal to end hunger by 2030, said the United Nations on Wednesday. A multi-year upward trend in hunger rates leveled off last year as many countries recovered economically from the pandemic, but the war in Ukraine and its pressure on food and energy prices offset some of those gains, the U.N. said in its annual State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report.
Exclusive-France picks Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim for bird flu vaccines
France has chosen German company Boehringer Ingelheim to supply the 80 million doses of bird flu vaccines needed for its vaccination campaign to start in October, an agriculture ministry spokesperson told Reuters on Wednesday. The government launched a tender in April to vaccinate ducks against avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, that has ravaged flocks around the world and led to the culling of hundreds of millions of birds.
Surging bird flu outbreaks raise human-infection risk, UN agencies warn
Three UN agencies on Wednesday warned that an ongoing rise in avian flu outbreaks globally raised concerns that the virus might adapt to infect humans more easily, and urged countries to strengthen disease surveillance and improve hygiene at poultry farms. Earlier this year, a new H5N1 strain of bird flu that is highly contagious among wild birds explosively spread to new geographical regions, infecting and killing a variety of mammal species and raising fears of a pandemic among humans.
Racism underlies disparities in maternal mortality in Americas -UN report
High rates of pregnancy-related deaths among women of African descent in North and South America are likely due largely to racism in the form of verbal and physical abuse from health care providers, denial of quality care, and refusal of pain relief, a U.N. report found. The new analysis by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) refutes misconceptions that Black women’s lifestyle choices or genetics underlie their poorer childbirth experiences, the authors said.
US FDA classifies recall of J&J’s electrosurgical tools as most serious
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday classified the recall of certain electrosurgery tools manufactured by a Johnson & Johnson unit as “most serious”, saying their use could lead to injuries or death. The U.S. health regulator said it had received reports of pediatric and adult patients suffering burn injuries when the tools, sold under the brand names MEGA 2000 and MEGA SOFT Reusable Patient Return Electrodes, were used on them.
EU extends Ozempic review to include more weight-loss, diabetes drugs
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Tuesday it has extended its probe into Novo Nordisk’s diabetes drugs Ozempic and weight-loss treatment Saxenda, following two reports of suicidal thoughts, to include other drugs in the same class. The agency began its review on July 3 after Iceland’s health regulator flagged the reports of patients thinking about suicide and one case of thoughts of self harm after use of Novo’s drugs.
(With inputs from agencies.)
