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OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma is set to be dissolved and replaced by a company focused on the public good by the week’s end, as a massive legal settlement resolving thousands of lawsuits takes effect. A federal judge on Tuesday delivered a criminal sentence to the company to resolve a U.S. Department of Justice probe — a last necessary step to clear the way for the settlement. U.S. District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo made her decision after listening to hours of impact statements from people who lost loved ones or struggled with addiction themselves and requested she reject the negotiated sentence. (Mulvihill, 4/29)

During a combative Senate hearing last week, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat from Maryland, leaned forward and asked U.S. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy about his vision for a national system of "wellness farms." "You said every black kid can be reparented on a wellness farm, can you admit that you said that?" Alsobrooks said, describing the concept as "dangerous" and "irresponsible." (Mann, 4/29)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration seeks to accelerate clinical trials of new medicines by using artificial intelligence to streamline the laborious process of collecting and submitting study data. Typically, medical centers involved in clinical trials pull study data from electronic-health records and enter them manually into a data-capture system. Then, the drug company developing the medicine reviews the data and submits them to the FDA. (Gormley, 4/28)

The FDA said that "manipulated" data supported the approval of avacopan (Tavneos) for anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis, and the agency is proposing to withdraw the drug's marketing approval. In a Monday letter to Amgen, which now holds avacopan's rights, the agency's top drug regulator said that new information came to light showing avacopan lacks "substantial evidence of effectiveness," and that developer ChemoCentryx's new drug application (NDA) contained "untrue statements of material facts" -- both legal bases for pulling a drug. (Ingram, 4/28)

An AIDS activist group filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for failing to disclose a research and development agreement that was at the heart of a settlement between the U.S. government and Gilead Sciences over patents for HIV prevention. (Silverman, 4/28)

Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH said patients using its experimental obesity shot lost 16.6% of their body weight in a large study, disappointing hopes it could outperform Eli Lilly & Co.’s market leader Zepbound. Patients in the trial shed the weight after 76 weeks of treatment with survodutide, compared with 3.2% weight loss for those given a placebo, Boehringer said Tuesday. Key details are still to be reported on side effects, patient dropouts, liver benefit and how much of the weight loss was from fat, which will help determine how competitive the drug can be. (Wind and Kresge, 4/28)

Canada has approved its first generic versions of Novo Nordisk A/S’s Ozempic, paving the way for cheaper access to the popular diabetes drugs. On Tuesday, Health Canada assigned drug identification numbers to semaglutide injections made by India-based Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd., according to its drug product database. Semaglutide is the main ingredient in Ozempic, and Novo’s protection against generics expired in Canada on Jan. 4. Dr. Reddy’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Kresge, Shin, and Heinzl, 4/28)

House Republicans during a Tuesday hearing blamed hospital and health systems for high health costs, excoriating a group of CEOs for exorbitant benefits packages, large profit margins and mergers. “Our communities are better off with hospitals in them, but large health systems have taken advantage of that reality,” Ways and Means Committee chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said. “Simply put, hospitals are charging an insane amount for care.” Hospitals are one of the primary drivers of increased health spending, accounting for about 31 percent of all health care costs, according to the most recent federal data. Smith noted that hospital prices have skyrocketed 300 percent in just over two decades. (Weixel, 4/28)

The hospital CEOs pushed back, saying the higher fees are because hospitals are often reimbursed below the cost of providing the care, particularly by government programs like Medicare and Medicaid. They also said the higher prices reflect the higher quality of their care, the cost of treating sicker patients and a federal requirement for hospitals to care for all patients, regardless of their ability to pay. Privately owned clinics and facilities can generally have the right to choose what patients they see and can demand payment up front. “We’re the only participants in the healthcare value chain that have that obligation,” said Michael Waldrum, the CEO of North Carolina-based hospital system ECU Health. “Doctors, nurses, insurance companies, drug companies do not.” (Lovelace Jr., 4/28)

A record 55% of Americans say their financial situation is worsening, with many expressing anxiety about covering monthly bills and making minimum credit card payments, according to a new Gallup poll. That percentage is the highest Gallup has recorded since it began asking Americans about their finances in 2001, showing consumers are less optimistic than they were during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the Great Recession in 2008. The survey is based on interviews with 1,001 adults conducted April 1-15, Gallup said. (Picchi, 4/28)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Trump’s Medicaid Work Mandate Debuting In Nebraska To Much Dismay

Schmeeka Simpson of Omaha works as a patient navigator for the American Civil Liberties Union and an administrative assistant at Nebraskans for Peace, plus picks up shifts at a Dunkin’ shop. Still, even with three jobs, she worries about losing her health coverage when Nebraska, on May 1, becomes the first state to require certain Medicaid enrollees to work, train, or go to school under a rule mandated by congressional Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. (Galewitz, 4/29)

Former Rep. Barney Frank, a liberal icon who was a key architect of the landmark Wall Street regulations Democrats enacted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, has entered hospice care at his home in Maine. And as one of his last acts, he is preparing to release a book repudiating his party’s left flank. A champion of liberal causes during his 32 years representing Massachusetts in the House, Frank says progressive Democrats have “embraced an agenda that goes beyond what’s politically acceptable.” (Goodman, 4/28)

Battleground-state voters across the political spectrum say the cost of their health care has skyrocketed this year. They’re avoiding the doctor because they can’t afford the out-of-pocket expenses. They feel forced to choose between paying their insurance or their rent — and they’re choosing rent. It’s everything Democrats warned would happen when Republicans cut Medicaid and let Obamacare subsidies lapse last year. But those same voters aren’t pinning the blame on Republicans alone. (Kashinsky, 4/28)

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Metairie, heard the gunshots at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He saw waitstaff duck for cover and Secret Service agents rush towards President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. “Some bad memories started coming back,” Scalise told NOTUS. Scalise survived an assassination attempt while at a practice for the Congressional Baseball Game in 2017. A gunman opened fire and struck Scalise, nearly killing him and leading to a lengthy recovery. (Gorman, 4/28)

The federal autism advisory committee met for the first time since [President Donald] Trump took office, months after health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired most of the committee’s scientific experts and replaced them with activists and advocates who more closely align with his controversial views on the link between autism, vaccines, and environmental factors. (Broderick, 4/28)

The Texas Medical Board is proposing tighter regulations around ketamine, a popular fast-acting sedative used to treat mental illness, including more physician oversight during administration of the drug and banning in-home use of it. (Simpson, 4/28)

The Chicago Department of Public Health announced a new street psychiatry pilot program and expanded mental health safety net thanks to an investment of over $16 million. The city's Mental Health Equity Initiative partner network, which launched in 2020, has enrolled more than 173,000 new clients between 2020 and 2025. Now it will launch its next phase, the Healthy Chicago Mental Health Collective, the city said. (Tenenbaum, 4/28)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Saving Lives By Changing Lives: The Next Frontier In Suicide Prevention

Someone in America dies by suicide every 11 minutes. It’s that common. But not normal. Humans have evolved over centuries to survive. So when people try to kill themselves, something has gone wrong. Typically, the assumption is that something happened in the person’s mind — a mental illness. But in recent decades, there’s been a growing movement to ask a different question: What went wrong in the world around that person? (Pattani, 4/29)

The first question Sophie Davies had was: Will it affect my memory? In the three weeks since giving birth, Ms. Davies had been in a downward spiral. She checked herself into the mother-and-baby unit of her hospital in East Anglia, England, where doctors ratcheted up the dose of Prozac she took to manage her obsessive-compulsive disorder. But every morning she woke up in tears, and every time she looked at her baby boy, she felt hollow with guilt. “I’m never going to be able to be a mom,” she recalled thinking, “or if I am, I’m not going to be able to be a good one.” (Gross, 4/28)

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong have developed a new model that was found to predict the risk that individuals with depression will harm themselves with good accuracy. This model, introduced in a paper published in Molecular Psychiatry, could help to devise more effective and personalized depression treatment plans. (Fadelli, 4/27)

Scrolling through picture-perfect motherhood posts online can take a serious toll on moms’ mental health, a new study shows. "It's very problematic, because social media really idealizes motherhood," said study author Ciera Kirkpatrick, assistant professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "There's a strong relationship between shame and postpartum depression." (4/28)

For the first time since last July the FDA's Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) will meet on Thursday to evaluate two cancer drugs after FDA staff voiced concerns about benefit-risk assessments, despite positive trial results. (Bassett, 4/28)

Vitamins are supposedly good for you, but some might also be good for cancer, Swiss researchers at the University of Lausanne found. Cancer cells have a weakness. They depend on the protein glutamine to produce the energy needed to divide and grow. The Swiss researchers found that cancer cells can escape this weakness with the help of Vitamin B7, or biotin. Without biotin, a protein produced mainly in muscle tissue, cancer cells lose that flexibility and stop growing. (Hille, 4/28)

Tumors need two things to thrive: a good blood supply and a way to keep the immune system at bay. Scientists have discovered the protein that helps skin cancer achieve both, and proved that disabling it shrinks tumors and reactivates the immune system. (Hille, 4/28)

A new way of using umbilical cord blood — by pooling blood from multiple donors — could make it easier to receive a stem cell transplant for leukemia, a new study says. Nearly everyone in a small group of patients who received these pooled transplants survived at least one year without severe signs of rejection, researchers reported April 27 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. (Thompson, 4/29)

Marriage is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer, recent research found. A study of more than 4 million cancer cases in the U.S. found that cancer rates were about 68% higher among men who have never married compared with those who have. For never-married women, the relationship was even more pronounced, with cancer rates roughly 83% higher, according to research published recently in the journal Cancer Research Communications. (Woodward, 4/29)

Lung cancer screening uptake with low-dose CT increased from 2022 to 2024, but remains low, according to a cross-sectional study. Across the U.S., 24.49% of survey respondents who met U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) eligibility criteria were up to date on their lung cancer screening in 2024 -- an increase in prevalence of 6 percentage points since 2022, with significant increases across most subgroups and no declines, reported Todd Burus, PhD, of the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and colleagues. (Bassett, 4/28)

Megan McNair was 29 and had just given birth to her second child in July when she learned she had Stage 4 colon cancer. Doctors initially told her she had five years to live. “My first thought was, ‘I’m dead. This is it,’” said McNair, who is from Alameda and now lives in Pollock Pines, about an hour outside Tahoe. “I just prayed for my health.” (Ho, 4/28)

Radiotherapy is best known as a cancer treatment, but a growing number of health systems and cancer centers are using it for a very different kind of disease. Osteoarthritis and other non-cancerous musculoskeletal conditions are increasingly being treated with radiation, opening up a new revenue stream for providers. About 33 million adults in the U.S. have osteoarthritis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Dubinsky, 4/28)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning of more than two dozen cases of possibly drug-resistant salmonella cases across 13 states. In an update last week, the CDC said all 34 people — several of whom are children— have the same strain of salmonella, which has been linked to backyard poultry. To make matters more difficult, the CDC says an analysis of all 34 patients showed the strain may be resistant to the antibiotic fosfomycin. Samples from eight of those patients showed there could be resistance to other antibiotics commonly used in salmonella infections. (Bink, 4/28)

Dr. David Morens, a former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci at the National Institutes of Health, has been indicted on charges of skirting federal record-keeping laws and concealing emails related to the origins of the coronavirus outbreak in China. The indictment, unsealed on Monday by the district court in Maryland, accuses Dr. Morens of working in concert with scientists outside the federal government to protect their funding for virus research. (Mueller, 4/28)

A cohort study on systematic SARS-CoV-2 screening for asymptomatic hospitalized patients during the COVID-19 pandemic shows that 36.5% of all positive results were false-positives, which led to unintended consequences. The study, recently published in JAMA Network Open, was based on 42,666 asymptomatic patients seen at the University Hospital Basel in Basel, Switzerland, from February 2021 through December 2022. (Soucheray, 4/28)

The World Health Organization (WHO) released a new report on hepatitis today, marking the World Hepatitis Summit. Since 2015, the annual number of new hepatitis B infections has dropped by 32%, and hepatitis C-related deaths have fallen by 12% around the world. But despite progress, the virus still causes significant mobility and mortality, with more than 4,900 new infections caused by hepatitis B and C every day, or 1.8 million each year. (Soucheray, 4/28)

Scientists shared transcripts with The Times in which chatbots described how to assemble deadly pathogens and unleash them in public spaces. (Dance, 4/29)

Tiny micro- and nanoplastic fragments seem to be turning up everywhere, including one of the most well-protected parts of the human body—the brain. In a recent study conducted by Chinese researchers, they found microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) in nearly all the brain samples they tested, both healthy and diseased human brains. (Mondal, 4/28)

A drug taken by thousands of Americans to improve longevity might have an unexpected side effect, a study has found. It may blunt some of the health benefits of exercise. The drug, rapamycin, is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to prevent organ-transplant rejection in people. But recent studies in yeast, flies and mice showed that relatively low doses of the drug often increase the creatures’ lifespans, prompting many longevity enthusiasts to start using it off-label to extend their lifespans. (Reynolds, 4/28)

Nearly 13% of US adults are relying on medication, supplements or marijuana to help them sleep, a new federal study found, underscoring the potential need for new treatment options. They are relying on prescription medication, over-the-counter drugs, supplements, marijuana or CBD to help fall or stay asleep, according to a survey by the National Center for Health Statistics. The survey, conducted in 2024, included results from more than 31,500 people who were asked about their use of sleep aids over the past month. (Inampudi, 4/29)

It’s well-known that ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) are not good for overall health — but new research has uncovered further evidence that this diet could negatively impact the brain. The study, published in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia by the Alzheimer’s Association, revealed that UPFs are linked to more than 30 adverse health outcomes, including several dementia risk factors, like cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity. (Stabile, 4/28)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Listen To The Latest '�鶹Ů�� Health News Minute'

Arielle Zionts reads the week’s news: The Trump administration wants to kick off a new baby boom with big changes to Title X. Plus, tips to make sure a life change doesn’t leave you without health insurance. (Cook, 4/28)

A Wyandotte County jury on Tuesday awarded $7.65 million in damages to the wife and son of a Raytown man who the family alleged contracted a fatal infection from a contaminated device used during his heart surgery at KU Med. (Thomas, 4/28)

When Sallanshell Wilson saw a family member of one of her patients walking down a lengthy hall at West Suburban Medical Center with a cane, she noticed that every few steps the woman slouched to the right. At that moment, Wilson thought, “If she had a walker, that will keep her more stable and possibly prevent her from falling,” she said. Wilson, a former registered nurse at the hospital, took it upon herself to buy a walker for the woman, paying for it out of her own pocket. (Hardy, 4/28)

The last time Alphanso Talley came before Judge John Lyke, things seemed to be going well. Talley was on electronic monitoring after being paroled in January from the Illinois Department of Corrections, where he’d been serving sentences for aggravated battery to a police officer and possession of a stolen vehicle. He also had a pair of cases pending for alleged carjacking and armed robbery, records show. (Kubzansky and Charles, 4/28)

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority board has scheduled a special meeting for today with four hours set aside for a closed session, an unusually long stretch of private discussion for a public body. (Crouch, 4/29)

Health systems are teaming with outside operators in a bid to make their home health units more financially viable. About 8% to 10% of patients discharged from the hospital need home health services such as wound care, physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. For many health systems, though, home care isn’t meaningfully contributing to the bottom line: The units typically account for only about 3% of overall revenues, said Tom Lillis, a post-acute care consultant with mergers and acquisitions advisory firm Stoneridge Partners. (Eastabrook, 4/28)

A deal for the University of Connecticut Health Center to take over Bristol Hospital is on track to be finalized by December or January, the hospital’s CEO Kurt Barwis said. (Golvala, 4/28)

The renovation and construction of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s new $117.4 million health sciences building has been completed, the university said Tuesday. The more than 172,000-square-foot facility, which will hold both pharmacy and nursing schools, will provide new classrooms, laboratories, study areas and administrative offices. (Bauer, 4/28)

Early detection of chronic diseases, reducing surgical risk and care transition coordination are just a few of the complex challenges the latest group of startups in Mayo Clinic Platform’s accelerator program are tackling. Since its 2022 launch, Mayo Clinic Platform_Accelerate, the program for emerging digital health companies, has featured about 100 companies. OpenEvidence, the well-funded, AI-powered clinical decision support platform, is one of the successful companies that was part of the program. (Famakinwa, 4/28)

A report released Wednesday highlights successes in reducing health disparities in U.S. states. Since the last iteration of the analysis by the Commonwealth Fund, two states expanded eligibility for Medicaid, many states extended postpartum coverage for mothers, and enrollment in Affordable Care Act marketplace plans increased at an unprecedented clip. (Oza, 4/29)

If all goes well — which is to say if you are generally healthy — you mostly experience the doctor’s office as an inconvenience, going to primary care appointments that are an hour of waiting for 20 minutes of care. If you’re ill, you fall into a Kafka-esque labyrinth of specialists, waiting rooms, and prior authorizations. You will be held tightly by the medical system, but you are unlikely to feel good. (Hannah Kerman, 4/29)

I’ve been waiting for health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to do something big on oversight of what I call pop peptides, like BPC-157 and GHK-Cu. He had long signaled that he was going to free such peptides from what he saw as a past, misguided FDA that had banned them in 2023. It’s finally happened — and the way it went down shook me up a bit. (Paul Knoepfler, 4/29)

A neuroscientist’s guide to reading the research yourself. (Richard M. Ransohoff, 4/28)

Why does it take a new drug 10 years, on average, to come to market? Part of the reason lies in the dead time in the process. Historically, trials have required tedious tabulations and repeated application submissions between phases, which is why 45% of the time from a Phase 1 trial until final submission is spent without any ongoing clinical trial in progress — idle time in the system. (FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, 4/28)

The email is sitting in my inbox like a countdown clock: $5,000 due to secure my surgery date. Another $7,000 required on the day of the procedure. Before even getting there, I had already paid $800 just for a consultation and thousands more from emergency room visits, trying to manage the pain. (Ella Nocera-DeJulio, 4/28)