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Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, are set to announce an agreement that would see Beijing crack down on the manufacture and export of fentanyl, according to people familiar with the matter, potentially delivering the US president a major victory. Under the deal — which is still being finalized — China would go after chemical companies to stem the flow of both fentanyl and the source material used to make the deadly synthetic opioid, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the agreement. (Leonard, 11/14)

Just blocks from where U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will meet other Asia-Pacific leaders this week in San Francisco is a neighborhood where it is commonplace to see people using and selling drugs. While the leaders are unlikely to see the blunt reality of the U.S. opioid crisis as they attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, it will be a topic of discussion when Biden and Xi meet one-on-one on Wednesday. (Henderson, Tong and Hunnicutt, 11/15)

Arkansas Children's Hospital System last week announced plans to build a first-of-its-kind research center geared toward opioid effects in infants and children. Why it matters: Infants are being born addicted to drugs and young children are dying of opioid poisoning, hospital officials said. (Golden, 11/15)

Drugmaker Mallinckrodt, one of America’s biggest producers of prescription opioids, said on Tuesday it has emerged from bankruptcy and reduced its total funded debt by about $1.9 billion. Mallinckrodt, which won court approval for its bankruptcy plan last month, said it is moving ahead with ample liquidity to execute its strategic priorities. (11/14)

Pharmacy benefit managers OptumRx and Express Scripts have lost a bid to disqualify a long-serving special master in national opioid litigation from working on cases against them on the basis of an email he accidentally sent to their attorneys. A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati, Ohio-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the pharmacy benefit managers' claim that the email, in which Special Master David Cohen wrote that the companies "knew a lot" about illicit opioid prescriptions, revealed bias. (Pierson, 11/14)

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

This week on the �鶹Ů�� Health News Minute: More than 10 million Americans have lost health care coverage as states purge their Medicaid rolls, and addiction treatment services compete with law enforcement for opioid settlement dollars. (11/14)

The Oklahoma Supreme Court reiterated its position on Tuesday in a 5-4 opinion that the state constitution guarantees a woman’s right to an abortion when necessary to preserve her life, although the procedure remains illegal in virtually all other cases. In a case involving a legal challenge to five separate anti-abortion bills passed by the Legislature in 2021, the court ordered a lower court to keep in place a temporary ban on three of those laws while the merits of the case are considered. Two of the laws were already put on hold by a district court judge. (Murphy, 11/14)

A pair of top Ohio Republicans are throwing cold water on some GOP lawmakers’ hopes to pass legislation stripping Ohio judges of the power to rule on the state’s new abortion-rights amendment. Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens said Tuesday that he does not consider the proposal, which would directly challenge the traditional separation of powers between the state’s legislative and judicial branches, to be serious legislation. (Pelzer, 11/14)

When Kimberly Manzano’s doctor first noticed some irregularities with her pregnancy, she turned to God, praying constantly for good news. When the diagnosis worsened, she and her husband sought comfort in the Bible’s Book of Hebrews — the book of hope. And when her doctor finally determined her baby could not survive outside the womb, she asked her pastor for advice. “He said, ‘if you believe your doctor to be a godly man, take what the doctor says as clarity from God in your decision,’” she recalls. Manzano and her husband, both devout Christians, decided the most loving thing they could do for their son was terminate the pregnancy. It was a difficult decision for the couple, who both considered themselves anti-abortion before this. (Klibanoff, 11/14)

The number of abortions in Pennsylvania increased after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, according to a new report. Why it matters: The new data is from a first-of-its kind study from the Society of Family Planning encompassing the full 12 months since the ruling. (D'Onofrio, 11/15)

Senate Democrats pushed ahead Tuesday with a resolution that would allow for the quick confirmation of hundreds of military nominees, an attempt to maneuver around a blockade from Sen. Tommy Tuberville over a Pentagon abortion policy. ... The panel voted 9-7 to approve a resolution that would allow the Senate to confirm groups of the military nominees at once for the remainder of the congressional term. (Jalonick, 11/14)

The next Republican president could effectively ban most abortions through a simple policy change at the Department of Justice, experts and advocates on both sides of the abortion debate say. While Republicans disagree about whether to pursue a national abortion ban that would face long odds in Congress, a GOP president may be able to unilaterally curb access to medication abortion across the country using an obscure 19th-century law. (Owens, 11/15)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: The Unusual Way A Catholic Health System Is Wielding An Abortion Protest Law

A Catholic hospital system is suing several California patients and their advocates because the patients allegedly refused to be discharged. The suits invoke a novel legal approach: accusing them of trespassing under a California law intended to stop anti-abortion protesters from blocking access to health facilities. Dignity Health has filed three lawsuits in Sacramento County accusing patients of “commercial blockade” for refusing to vacate hospital beds even though the health care provider had deemed them medically and legally eligible to either go home or go to another facility. Dignity alleges the patients “unreasonably and unlawfully” refused discharge, disrupting its ability to serve others at a time when health facilities were overwhelmed by covid-19. (Lin, 11/15)

It was delightful news for the Worcester woman following her ultrasound last year at Clearway Clinic: A nurse said the results showed the start of a healthy pregnancy, according to the woman. Her delight turned to devastation the next month, however, when she suffered a sudden shooting pain in her side and, after being rushed to the hospital, learned there never was a healthy pregnancy. Clearway Clinic had allegedly misdiagnosed an ectopic pregnancy that would need to be ended immediately, or she could die. (Scott, 11/14)

After she turned 42, Teesha Karr thought she was done having kids. Six, in her mind, was perfect. And besides, she was pretty sure she had started menopause. For the past six months she’d had all the same signs as her friends: hot flashes, mood swings, tender breasts. She and her husband decided they could probably safely do away with contraception. But less than a month later, Karr felt a familiar twinge of pain in her ovary—the same twinge she’d felt every time she’d been pregnant before. (Gross, 11/14)

Internal documents show the WHO paid at least 104 women who say they were sexually abused or exploited by officials working to stop Ebola. ... Paula Donovan, who co-directs the Code Blue campaign to eliminate what it calls impunity for sexual misconduct in the U.N., described the WHO payments to victims of sexual abuse and exploitation as “perverse.” “It’s not unheard of for the U.N. to give people seed money so they can boost their livelihoods, but to mesh that with compensation for a sexual assault, or a crime that results in the birth of a baby, is unthinkable,” she said. (Cheng, 11/14)

The House on Tuesday passed stopgap legislation to keep the federal government operating past this weekend, sending the bill to the Senate days before the 12:01 a.m., Saturday deadline. ... The “laddered” deadlines in the bill are designed to allow the House and Senate to pass and negotiate full-year spending bills — though the two chambers are nowhere near an agreement on those — and avoid a massive year-end spending bill called an omnibus. It could still trigger two more standoffs that lead to partial government shutdowns early next year. Funds would expire for military and veterans programs, agriculture and food agencies, and the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development on Jan. 19. They would expire for the State, Defense, Commerce, Labor, and Health and Human Services departments, among others, on Feb. 2. (Bogage and Sotomayor, 11/14)

The latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll finds that most of the American public has grown weary of political games on Capitol Hill. Three out of four U.S. adults say that it is unacceptable for members of Congress to leverage the threat of a federal closure during budget negotiations – a sentiment that held true for majorities across political parties. (Santhanam, 11/15)

An estimated 36 million adults in the United States have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine as of Monday, according to new data from the federal government. Additionally, about 3.5 million children have also gotten the updated shot, according to the survey, which is a sample size of the U.S. population, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Benadjaoud and Kekatos, 11/14)

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal filed by four New Jersey nurses over the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers. Even though the mandate has since been rescinded, a 2022 lawsuit brought by four nurses from Hunterdon Medical Center was still winding its way through the court system. The nurses had challenged the constitutionality of three of Gov. Phil Murphy’s executive orders requiring health care workers in New Jersey be immunized. (Kent, 11/14)

Back-to-school vaccine clinics got off to a rocky start in some Maryland counties this year after the state health department did not renew a statewide contract with a Baltimore-based nonprofit that supported coronavirus immunization efforts. At least three counties did not hold their usual flu vaccination clinics without the help of nurses from the Maryland Partnership for Prevention or PrepMod, the nonprofit’s scheduling and vaccine documentation software, which they’d used to support those efforts as well. The end of the contract also disrupted flu and back-to-school immunizations in at least two other counties, officials said. (Roberts, 11/14)

With Thanksgiving and other winter holidays on the horizon, families and friends are making plans to gather indoors for customary meals and festivities. For many, the rush to get updated COVID vaccines and flu shots before these celebrations has become almost as traditional in recent years as rounding up the fixings for favorite side dishes and desserts. Now there are also vaccines for RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, to consider to help tamp down respiratory viruses that pose a triple threat as the year comes to a close and a new one begins. (Blythe, 11/15)

A new study has affirmed that 1 in 5 individuals who take the antiviral medication Paxlovid to treat COVID-19 encounters a rebound infection. ... The preliminary research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Internal Medicine on Monday, reveals that the phenomenon, known as “viral rebound,” occurred in approximately 21% of Paxlovid recipients, contrasting sharply with the 2% observed in those not prescribed the medication. (Vaziri, 11/14)

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other US institutions have created an mpox severity scoring system that they say could help clinicians track disease progression and response to treatment and guide researchers in identifying risk factors for severe illness and assessing the effectiveness of therapeutics. (Van Beusekom, 11/14)

An expert scientific committee advising the British government recommended for the first time Tuesday that children should be immunized with the chickenpox vaccine — decades after the shots were made widely available in other countries, including the U.S., Canada and Australia (11/14)

In March 2020, Tagide deCarvalho saw something truly strange — something she thinks no other scientist has ever seen before: a virus with another, smaller virus latched onto its “neck.” The backstory of this viral attachment is like a master class in how wild and weird biology can be. The two microbes are both bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, that were harvested from a clump of dirt in Poolesville, Md. Bacteriophages, also called simply phages, are among the most abundant organisms on Earth. There can be millions in a gram of dirt. (Johnson, 11/14)

America’s trust in scientists and positive views of science has continued to decline, according to a new report. The Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank, asked a random sample of 8,842 American adults this fall about their views on science and scientists. They found that roughly a quarter of Americans — 27% — said they have not too much or no confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests, compared to 12% who said the same in April 2020. (Nayak, 11/14)

UnitedHealth Group faces a potential class-action lawsuit over its use of an artificial intelligence tool to allegedly deny post-acute care coverage to Medicare Advantage members. The plaintiffs, family members of two deceased UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage policyholders, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota and aim to represent a national class of similarly affected enrollees. The lawsuit alleges that the health insurance company breached its contracts with members, which resulted in unjust enrichment under federal law. (Tepper, 11/14)

The U.S. Justice Department has asked a judge to dismiss the government's prosecution of a UnitedHealth Group affiliate accused of unlawfully restricting employee mobility, marking a new setback in the government's push to apply criminal antitrust laws to labor markets. U.S. prosecutors in a filing in federal court in Dallas asked U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay to dismiss charges against Surgical Care Affiliates LLC and a related entity, SCAI Holdings LLC. (Scarcella, 11/14)

Health systems are deploying Amazon’s voice-enabled virtual assistant Alexa in an attempt to improve the patient experience. Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai, Phoenix Children’s Hospital and Clearwater, Florida-based BayCare Health System are among the health systems using Alexa-enabled devices in patient rooms to assist in a range of functions, from setting room temperature to translating clinician encounters for non-English speakers. (Turner, 11/14)

The Illinois Nurses Association said they have been in contract negotiations for over a year, seeking better wages, a smaller workload, affordable insurance, and protections from layoffs. The strike is scheduled to last Tuesday and Wednesday, with a rally scheduled for Wednesday night at the Howard Brown Health clinic at 3501 N. Halsted St. Howard Brown Health is the largest LGBTQ+ healthcare clinic system in the Midwest. (Feurer, 11/14)

Kaiser Permanente is diversifying in response to declines in Medicare Advantage star ratings and threats from large insurers and retailers. The Oakland, California-based integrated system suffered a setback in its Medicare Advantage business when it experienced one of the industry's biggest declines in quality ratings this year, with four of its seven plans losing out on bonus payments. (Tepper, 11/14)

One day in early 2020, just weeks before Philadelphia entered lockdown, Thomas Jefferson University’s public safety lead Joseph Byham abandoned a brisk walk to respond to an urgent incident. A clinician at one of Jefferson’s Center City hospitals had pressed a badge-worn button summoning security immediately: a traumatic brain injury patient was attempting to flee, and they feared it would escalate into violence. By the time Byham arrived, the patient had escaped to the stairwell and was surrounded by six hospital staff, each of whom had been automatically notified that a nearby colleague was in distress. Once security arrived, the patient was returned to their hospital bed, and staff resumed rounds uninjured. (Ravindranath, 11/15)

Step inside Natasha Sheybani’s office at the University of Virginia, where she runs a bioengineering lab, and you’ll find a kaleidoscopic sea of sticky notes. She uses purple for ideas sparked by meetings, orange for future grant proposals. But she’s most excited about the yellow stickies, which Sheybani saves for moonshots: projects that are high-risk and high-reward. (Wosen, 11/15)

Cigna Group is taking a page from billionaire Mark Cuban’s playbook to sell medicines for a set markup, the latest sign that companies that manage drug benefits are responding to pressure from upstart competitors. Next year Cigna’s Express Scripts subsidiary will offer employers and health plans the option to pay pharmacies up to 15% above their wholesale costs, plus an extra fee for dispensing the medicines. (Tozzi, 11/14)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Biden Administration’s Limit On Drug Industry Middlemen Backfires, Pharmacists Say

The Biden administration’s first major step toward imposing limits on the pharmacy benefit managers who act as the drug industry’s price negotiators is backfiring, pharmacists say. Instead, it’s adding to the woes of the independent drugstores it was partly designed to help. The so-called PBMs have long clawed back a fee from pharmacies weeks or months after they dispense a drug. A new rule, which governs Medicare’s drug program, is set to take effect Jan. 1 and requires PBMs to take most of their “performance fees” at the time prescriptions are filled. (Allen, 11/15)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it had sent a warning letter to Amazon.com related to sale of seven unapproved eye drops on the company's e-commerce platform. In the letter dated Nov. 13, FDA said Amazon was selling eye drops which have not been recognized as safe and effective for providing temporary relief from eye symptoms such as excessive watery discharge, redness, burning, or pink eye. (11/14)

The head of German drug regulator BfArM is considering an export ban on Novo Nordisk's diabetes drug Ozempic, which is in high demand for its weight-loss benefits, to prevent a worsened supply shortage. ... "We are currently in talks with lawmakers about what we will do if the current measures and the public messages don't show an effect," BfArM President Karl Broich told Spiegel magazine. "We would then think about imposing an export ban so that enough remains in the country for the patients that need it," said Broich, adding that the drug was going to other European countries and the United States. (Burger, 11/15)

Belgium tightened rules around prescribing Novo Nordisk A/S’s Ozempic and other diabetes medications amid shortages driven by competing demand for the drugs as a popular remedy for weight loss. The drugs may only be prescribed to patients with type 2 diabetes and people with certain types of obesity, the Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products said in a statement on Tuesday. (Pronina, 11/14)

Theseus Pharmaceuticals says it is laying off 72 percent of its workforce, or 26 employees, just four months after safety concerns derailed the Cambridge biotech’s clinical trial on an experimental drug to treat a form of gastrointestinal cancer. Theseus announced the layoffs after the market closed Monday and said it was “exploring strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value,” corporate lingo for launching a sale. (Saltzman, 11/14)

EMD Serono, the American drug development arm of Germany’s Merck KGaA, plans to move its headquarters from the South Shore town of Rockland to Boston’s Seaport district next summer. The company will join more than two dozen life sciences companies, including biopharma giants Vertex and Eli Lilly, that have moved to or are constructing buildings in the Seaport. Once a neighborhood of warehouses and parking lots, the Seaport has emerged as the state’s second-largest drug discovery cluster after Cambridge’s Kendall Square. (Weisman, 11/14)

The new National Institutes of Health director, Monica Bertagnolli, said it’s a “failure” that enrollment in government-funded clinical trials has lagged behind those funded by the pharmaceutical industry. (Cohrs, 11/14)

Doctors have long relied on a few key patient characteristics to assess risk of a heart attack or stroke, using a calculus that considers blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking and diabetes status, as well as demographics: age, sex and race. Now, the American Heart Association is taking race out of the equation. The overhaul of the widely used cardiac-risk algorithm is an acknowledgment that, unlike sex or age, race identification in and of itself is not a biological risk factor. (Rabin, 11/14)

 The suicide rate in the United States spiked in 2021, reversing two years of decline, and rates among older men were especially high, a new report says. There were about 30 suicide deaths for every 100,000 men ages 55 and older in 2021, according to a report published Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – more than double the overall age-adjusted rate of about 14 suicide deaths for every 100,000 people that year. Men 85 and older were the most at risk, with nearly 56 suicide deaths for every 100,000 people in that group, higher than any other age group. (McPhillips, 11/15)

Caregiving was associated with a lower risk of death in older women in the U.S., according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. ... The women who reported themselves as caregivers had a 9% lower risk of dying from any cause compared to the non-caregivers, according to the study findings. The researchers also found that the caregiving group had a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease or cancer. (McGorry, 11/15)

Researchers in France assessed statistics from 97 different emergency departments across the country between Dec. 12-14, 2022, focusing on patients who were older than age 75. They compared patients in two different groups: those who were admitted to a regular hospital room before midnight, and those who had to spend a full night in the ER before they were given a room. The latter group was more likely to die in the hospital within 30 days (15.7% vs. 11.1%). (Rudy, 11/15)

A new report details the toll lung cancer is taking on public health. The American Lung Association's data breaks down the challenges faced by each state. More than 350 people die from lung cancer nationwide each day. But there's been a 22% increase in survival rates over the past five years. (11/14)

Donna Thompson, who lives in Havertown, has had lung cancer twice. She was first diagnosed when she was 45. "It's scary and it is life-changing," she said. Doctors think environmental exposures to things like radon could be part of the reason for the growing number of young nonsmokers with lung cancer. (Stahl, 11/14)

Climate change continues to have a worsening effect on health and mortality around the world, according to an exhaustive report published on Tuesday by an international team of 114 researchers. One of the starkest findings is that heat-related deaths of people older than 65 have increased by 85 percent since the 1990s, according to modeling that incorporates both changing temperatures and demographics. People in this age group, along with babies, are especially vulnerable to health risks like heat stroke. As global temperatures have risen, older people and infants now are exposed to twice the number of heat-wave days annually as they were from 1986 to 2005. (Erdenesanaa, 11/14)

The demographics of eating disorders are shifting younger, now most commonly affecting teens between 14 and 18 years old, according to a new analysis. The data, based on a FAIR Health repository of 43 billion private health insurance claims, sheds new light on an uptick in eating disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among teens. (Reed, 11/15)

In Stockton, California, almost 60% of the city’s 320,000 residents are prediabetic or living with diabetes. Shane Bailey, a 72-year-old longtime resident and U.S. Coast Guard veteran, is one of them. And because she lives in a neighborhood that is considered a food desert because it lacks nearby grocery stores, it can be a huge challenge to access healthy, affordable food. (Nayak, 11/14)

In a study at multiple sites nationwide, researchers are testing the effectiveness of four nonsurgical treatments in connection with specific personal traits of patients. Each treatment has been shown to work, though not equally well for everyone. The four treatments: acceptance-and-commitment therapy, which helps people learn new skills for dealing with pain; duloxetine, a medication used for depression, anxiety and chronic musculoskeletal pain; an online program with personalized messages to teach lifestyle skills for pain management; and a form of exercise therapy with stretches, strength training and hands- on treatment by a physical therapist or chiropractor. (Landro, 11/14)

An analysis released Tuesday from scientists behind a research initiative called the BIG JOY Project finds that people who commit daily "micro-acts" of joy experience about a 25% increase in emotional well-being over the course of a week. "We're really excited," says Emiliana Simon-Thomas, a BIG JOY project leader, and science director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. "There are statistically significant, measurable changes [including] greater well-being, better coping, less stress, more satisfaction with relationships." (Aubrey, 11/14)

New Hampshire’s largest health system is calling for more action on gun safety after last month’s mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. In an op-ed published by some New Hampshire news outlets last week, leaders at Dartmouth Health said preventing gun deaths should be seen as a public health issue – not a political one. “As health systems, sometimes we're the only public health provider,” Dr. Joanne Conroy, Dartmouth Health’s president and CEO, told NHPR. “That is a group can actually stand up and say, ‘We need to have different solutions.’ ” (Cuno-Booth, 11/14)

This week, mental health practitioners and firearms experts are coming together to discuss safety and support for gun owners. The Firearms and Mental Health: Fostering Understanding, Safety and Support conference is organized by the University of Wyoming’s new Firearms Research Center. More than half of the firearms deaths in the U.S. are done by suicide, and Wyoming has the highest rate of suicide in the country. Ashely Hlebensky, executive director of the Firearms Reasearch Center, said the idea is to discuss suicide prevention for firearms owners. (Kudelska, 11/14)

Hackensack Meridian Health and Amazon’s One Medical intend to open 20 primary care clinics throughout New Jersey over the next decade. The partnership announced Tuesday between the nonprofit New Jersey health system and One Medical, which provides virtual and brick-and-mortar primary care services to commercially insured patients for an annual membership fee, expands One Medical’s health system affiliate network. (Kacik, 11/14)

Knowing that an involuntary commitment can be “traumatic for individuals who have preconceived notions,’’ Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s new behavioral health unit, opening on Dec. 1 on Osprey Avenue in Sarasota, was designed to offer a different approach. (Hicks, 11/14)

Activists braved the cold on Monday evening to rally against the proposed closure of the labor and delivery unit at Windham Hospital, one of three Connecticut hospitals currently seeking permission to end birthing services. “This is how you kill a small city,” said Rodney Alexander, on the steps of the State Capitol. Alexander is a member of the Willimantic town council and vice president of the local NAACP branch. “How can you convince a young couple to move to Willimantic, raise a family, with no maternity ward?” (Golvala, 11/14)

Jefferson Health has partnered with the Veterans Administration to share data in an effort to improve health care for patients with a military background. The goal is for physicians at Jefferson to identify patients who are veterans and might benefit from health programs at the VA — and for VA physicians to understand the care their patients may have received at other health institutions. Jefferson is one of 13 health systems in the country participating in the data-sharing program, which officials at the VA hope to expand eventually around the country. (Whelan, 11/14)

Israeli forces on Wednesday raided Gaza’s largest hospital, a beleaguered facility filled with hundreds of patients, including newborns, that is at the heart of clashing narratives around the war and a potent symbol of Palestinian suffering. Israel viewed Shifa Hospital as a key target in a conflict that has killed thousands of Palestinians and unleashed widespread destruction in Gaza. The war between Israel and Hamas erupted after the militant group killed some 1,200 people and seized around 240 captives in a surprise Oct. 7 attack. (Shurafa and Magdy, 11/15)

The Israeli military shared video and photographs on Monday showing what it said were weapons stored by Hamas in the basement of a children's hospital in Gaza where it also said hostages appear to have been held. Military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said troops had found a command centre with an armoury of weapons including grenades, suicide vests and other explosives stored by Hamas fighters in the basement of Rantissi Hospital, a paediatric hospital with a specialty in treating cancer patients. (11/13)

The head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday it had lost touch with health personnel at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza after Israeli forces began raiding the facility. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the reports of the military incursion into Shifa were deeply concerning. "We've lost touch again with health personnel at the hospital. We're extremely worried for their and their patients' safety," he said on social media platform X. (11/15)

Minutes after 1 a.m. Friday, as active fighting raged between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, a projectile streaked over Gaza’s largest medical complex and crashed into the center of the courtyard of Al-Shifa Hospital, a place where thousands of displaced Gazans had sought shelter. It landed just a few feet from Ahmed Hijazi, a social media personality who has been documenting the conflict. He filmed a video of the projectile flying in, and then of a man in agony, his leg mangled by the impact. (Browne and Collier, 11/14)

The lives of 36 babies at Gaza's Al Shifa Hospital were hanging in the balance on Tuesday, according to medical staff there who said there was no clear mechanism to move them despite an Israeli effort to supply incubators for an evacuation. Three of the original 39 premature babies have already died since Gaza's biggest hospital ran out of fuel at the weekend to power generators that had kept their incubators going. (Al-Mughrabi and Williams, 11/14)

They are some of the most vulnerable in Gaza. The youngest is not even a year old; the oldest is 14. All are battling lymphoma, leukemia and tumors that doctors said could kill them if left untreated. Over the past 10 days, 21 children with cancer have been evacuated from Gaza to hospitals in Egypt and Jordan, according to doctors involved in the effort. But at least 30 other young cancer patients have not made it out, and aid workers said that in the chaos of war, they can no longer reach some of the families. (LaFraniere and Green, 11/14)

Despite national medical guidelines supporting the use of antiviral medications in young children diagnosed with influenza, a new study reports an underuse of the treatment. (Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 11/13)

Pfizer will cut 500 jobs at its Sandwich, Kent site in the U.K. as part of its $3.5 billion cost-cutting plan, the drugmaker said on Tuesday. The U.S. drugmaker announced the cost-cutting program in October after slashing its full-year revenue forecast due to lower-than-expected sales of its COVID-19 vaccine and treatment. (11/14)

Biotech company Acuitas Therapeutics has filed a lawsuit in Virginia federal court against Germany-based CureVac, accusing it of failing to credit Acuitas scientists on patents related to COVID-19 vaccines. Acuitas told the court on Monday that CureVac omitted its scientists from patent applications for lipid nanoparticle technology used in messenger RNA-based vaccines after they collaborated to develop the technology during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Brittain, 11/14)

The TB Alliance announced yesterday that Indian pharmaceutical company Macleods will start manufacturing an essential component of the shorter, all-oral drug regimen for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB). Under a licensing agreement with the non-profit TB Alliance, Macleods will be able to supply 135 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with pretomanid, which is part of the 6-month BPaL (bedaquiline, pretomanid, and linezolid) regimen used with or without moxifloxacin (BPaLM). Macleods will supply the drug to those countries through the Stop TB Partnership's Global Drug Facility. Pretomanid was developed by TB Alliance and approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2019. (Dall, 11/14)

Novo Nordisk’s obesity drug Wegovy notably cut the risk of heart attacks in a landmark cardiovascular trial that affirms the treatment offers health benefits beyond weight loss. (Chen, 11/11)

Semaglutide, a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist, has been shown to reduce the risk of adverse cardiovascular events in patients with diabetes. Whether semaglutide can reduce cardiovascular risk associated with overweight and obesity in the absence of diabetes is unknown. (Lincoff, M.D., et al, 11/11)

Doctors are getting inundated with patients' requests for wildly popular new anti-obesity drugs, including from many who don't really need them. Why it matters: Primary care doctors in particular, who typically have little training in obesity, have found themselves as gatekeepers for a class of injection drugs, including Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy, that are effective but still face questions about who should take them. (Reed, 11/13)

The announcement by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services that ten drugs will be subject to price negotiation under the Inflation Adjustment Act has unleashed a storm of debate. (James B. Rebitzer and Robert S. Rebitzer, 11/14)

The first snippet of data from a human clinical trial suggests the viability of an experimental drug from Verve Therapeutics that uses gene editing to permanently lower cholesterol. It opens the door to a once-fantastical future when people can trade daily lipid-lowering pills for a one-time treatment. (Lisa Jarvis, 11/13)

In response to calls for precision medicine, some clinical and basic scientists have transitioned from evaluating which interventions are safe and effective for a majority of patients to more refined approaches designed to find the right treatment for the right patient at the right time. (Paul L. Kimmel, M.D., and David S,. Wendler, Ph.D., 11/11)

Several critical advances this month will go a long way toward making obesity drugs more widely available to patients: more consistent access, improved affordability and global conviction that these potentially lifelong treatments are worth the cost to the health-care system. (Lisa Jarvis, 11/13)

Healthcare often looks to other industries for ideas about how to improve experiences, workflows and revenue. Although this practice creates significant opportunities to learn and innovate, it has also ignited a trend of referring to patients as customers. This view is problematic. (Drs. Niraj Sehgal and Michael Pfeffer, 11/15)

Only “the three Ps” — pee, poop and paper — go in the toilet. Everything else goes in the trash can. Right? The last century has given us three new Ps to contend with: plastics, PFAS, and pharmaceuticals. We should not flush these, though throwing them in the trash doesn’t mean they won’t come back to harm us. Microplastics are found in human blood. PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are known popularly as “forever chemicals” and are associated with a host of bad health effects — taint the drinking water of numerous communities. Drugs meant to treat deadly disease in human beings end up causing illness in other creatures when, discarded, they leach into the water. (11/15)

Drug users switch to fentanyl and pass court-ordered drug tests. Courts lecture first-time drug offenders on the dangers of fentanyl but don’t screen them for it. Emergency rooms send overdose patients home without testing them for the substance driving the nation’s drug crisis. (Claire Ballor and Sharon Grigsby, 11/14)

Convenience is rapidly becoming a guiding principle for hospital system strategy and competition. As patients demand a more convenient, integrated care experience, and new partnerships/acquisitions (for instance, CVS Health and Oak Street Health, or Amazon and One Medical) redefine what the consumer health care journey looks like, the industry will continue to see a collision between virtual, at-home, and in-person care. (Sean Duffy and Seth Joseph, 11/15)