Â鶹ŮÓÅ

One of the most closely watched hearings on a proposed drug in years convenes Monday morning in Hyattsville, Md., where a panel of medical experts will consider an application by Cambridge’s Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. for approval of a Duchenne muscular dystrophy treatment. (Weisman, 4/25)

Billy Ellsworth, a teenager with an inexorable and devastating degenerative muscle disease, will bring a football with him to a Maryland hotel conference center on Monday. For months, he has been brainstorming a way to prove to a panel of scientists and physicians that the experimental drug he has been taking for more than four years has kept him strong and well — and he’d like to punctuate his brief testimony in the clearest possible way: by throwing them the ball. (Johnson, 4/23)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed a ban on electrical stimulation devices (ESDs) that are used to curb individuals from engaging in self-injurious or aggressive behavior, saying they pose an "unreasonable and substantial" risk to public health. (4/23)

Seven years after U.S. regulators slapped their strictest warning on two popular smoking-cessation medicines citing risks of suicidal behavior, a large international study found no such risk. (Johnson, 4/22)