News
Bio Farma to produce Merck & Co’s HPV vaccine
In a bid to combat HPV-linked cervical cancer in the country Indonesia will produce drugmaker Merck & Co’s vaccines for human papillomavirus (HPV), the chief of its state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma said last Tuesday,. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/985471?src=wnl_edit_tpal&uac=398271FG&impID=4990446&faf=1 Cervical cancer is the fourth-most common cancer among women globally, with an estimated 604,000 new cases and 342,000 deaths …
Court dismisses Zantac claims
Thousands of consumers who sued makers of the popular heartburn drug Zantac, alleging it caused them to develop cancer, failed to present a reliable scientific basis for their claims, a U.S. District Court judge in Florida said when she dismissed their lawsuits last week. In 2020, the Food and Drug Administration requested recalls of the …
Jeremy Farrar, to take on chief scientist role at WHO
Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, one of the largest nongovernmental science funders, will step down early next year to become the chief scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO). He will replace Soumya Swaminathan, the first person to hold the post. Swaminathan, a paediatrician, announced last month that she would be leaving to focus on …
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Measles outbreak attributed to low vaccine coverage
A measles outbreak in Mumbai, followed by Ranchi, Ahmedabad and Malappuram in India over the past month has drawn attention to the large number of unvaccinated children. Over 16,000 suspected cases have been recorded in India. Of the 20 children who have died of measles since October 26 in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, just one …
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Clinical trials show promising results for sleeping sickness drug; The latest health stories from around the world
A new drug that can treat human African trypanosomiasis—commonly known as sleeping sickness—with just one dose has shown promise in a clinical trial in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guinea. www.science.org/content/article/news-at-a-glance-snags-emissions-monitoring-negotiations-biodiversity-sleeping-sickness? The rare disease is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma brucei gambiense, which is transmitted by the tsetse fly. Left untreated, it is deadly. …
Potential new therapy for Alzheimer’s disease
In a packed San Francisco conference room last Tuesday, upbeat company representatives and scientists presented detailed clinical trial data on the first Alzheimer’s treatment shown to clearly, albeit modestly, slow the disease’s normal cognitive decline. The antibody therapy has buoyed a field marked by decades of failures. Now, it appears to be on the cusp …
Cholera epidemic returns to Haiti
On 2 October, Haiti announced that cholera had returned to the country. Memories from the previous epidemic, which killed close to 10,000 Haitians between 2010 and 2019, are still raw; now, with violent gangs fighting for control over the country and the health system in disarray, things could again become very fraught. www.science.org/content/article/vaccines-are-short-supply-amid-global-cholera-surge? A few …
WHO to change name of monkeypox to mpox
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced this week it will start referring to monkeypox disease as “mpox” (pronounced “em-pox”) after the current name drew criticism as evoking racist stereotypes and inviting stigmatization. It is also a misnomer: The virus was first identified in laboratory monkeys but is most likely carried by rodents in the wild. …
Study finds clams produce their own antibiotics
Natural antibiotics typically come from bacteria or molds. But some clams make their own erythromycin, a study has found—the first animals reported to possess this ability. The spotted hard clam (Meretrix petechialis) has a mucus-covered outer lip that contains specialized antibiotic-producing cells, according to an international research team. These may protect the clams, which lack …
