Â鶹ŮÓÅ

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a blood test intended to detect colon cancer, a product many experts hope will help catch cases of the disease early enough so that they can be more easily treated. The test, called Shield and made by Guardant Health, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based biotech firm, comes with a drawback: It is not as good as a colonoscopy and other tests at detecting precancerous or early stage cancers. But some experts have welcomed it as a way to approach another problem: As effective as colonoscopy is as both a way of finding cancer and removing lesions that could become cancer later on, many people are unwilling to undergo the procedure. (Herper, 7/29)

The US government is throwing its weight behind African production of antiretrovirals as the continent grapples the world’s largest HIV epidemic. The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program — known as Pepfar — has committed to expand its purchase of ARVs from local suppliers to cover 2 million African patients, said Stavros Nicolaou, the head of strategic trade at Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd. (Kew, 7/29)

Transgender people are at higher-than-average risk of contracting HIV. And yet, when epidemiologist Diana Tordoff set out to analyze how transmission of the virus might change in the U.S. over the next 10 years with increased testing and preventative PrEP medication, she found there wasn’t enough existing data on trans and nonbinary people to answer the question for those populations. (Gaffney, 7/30)

Semaglutide, the active ingredient in drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic, can help people lose weight — and a new study says it may also help people quit smoking. In the study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine on Monday, researchers found semaglutide was associated with lower risks for tobacco use disorder-related health care measures, including reduced smoking cessation medication prescriptions and counseling. (Moniuszko, 7/29)

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has regained weight and appears to have obesity-related health problems such as high blood pressure and diabetes, and his officials are looking for new medicines abroad to treat them, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers Monday. The 40-year-old Kim, known for heavy drinking and smoking, comes from a family with a history of heart problems. Both his father and grandfather, who ruled North Korea before his 2011 inheritance of power, died of heart issues. (Kim, 7/29)

If millions of Americans no longer qualify for a statin or a blood pressure medication based on a new calculator updated to better predict their risk, that could lead to 107,000 more heart attacks and strokes over 10 years, a new study estimates. (Cooney, 7/29)

A study conducted at two large pediatric academic healthcare systems found that three-quarters of antibiotic prescriptions for children with ear infections were longer than recommended, researchers reported last week in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society. (Dall, 7/29)

Patients of color receive different pain care than white patients, and universities are turning to implicit bias training for clinicians and revamping medical school curricula to help fix the problem. Disparities between racial groups in pain management largely exist due to the widespread, incorrect belief among providers that race is biological rather than a social construct, according to experts. (Devereaux, 7/29)

GSK Plc and Flagship Pioneering Inc. entered a partnership to develop as many as 10 new drugs in a deal that could pay more than $7 billion to firms supported by the venture capital biotech. Flagship, which created mRNA Covid-vaccine maker Moderna Inc., and GSK will jointly put $150 million upfront toward exploring new respiratory and immunology treatments, according to a statement Monday. (Furlong, 7/29)

British drugmaker GSK said on Monday it has agreed to confidentially settle a lawsuit in Illinois that alleged its discontinued heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer, the latest in a series of settlements to end costly litigation. (7/29)