Health News Round-up: Brexit clouds drug, Trevena opioid injection, Seafood allergies

The move follows a similar ban on imports from Bulgaria on Monday and comes as the northeastern province of Liaoning reported a second outbreak of highly contagious African swine fever in two days.

 

Don't pick doctors based on where they went to medical school

Where a doctor went to medical school in the U.S. doesn't predict how well that doctor's patients will do, a new study suggests. Researchers who looked at outcomes of nearly one million hospitalizations managed by more than 30,000 physicians found no difference in patients' risks of death or hospital readmission according to where their doctor's medical school fell in the U.S. News & World Report medical school rankings, according to the report in The BMJ.

UK clinical trials fall as Brexit clouds drug approval process

The number of new clinical trials started in Britain last year was 25 per cent lower than the average for 2009-16, as anxiety about Brexit's impact on future medicines regulation made companies hesitate about running studies in the country. A total of 597 trials were initiated in Britain in 2017, against an average of 806 over the previous eight years, according to a Fitch analysis on Tuesday.

Church-based programs may help bring blood pressure down

Lifestyle interventions delivered in churches by community-based health care workers may help bring down blood pressure among African-Americans, a new study finds. Hypertensive church members who attended weekly sessions devoted to lifestyle modification achieved an average drop of more than 16 points in systolic blood pressure levels, researchers reported in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

FDA staff raises safety issues over Trevena opioid injection

Trevena Inc's opioid injection to treat acute pain could be abused and potentially lead to overdose, staff reviewers of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday, sending the drugmaker's shares down 66 per cent. The treatment, oliceridine, aims to manage moderate-to-severe acute pain in adult patients for whom an intravenous opioid is necessary and the injection should be administered in hospitals and ambulatory surgery centres.

For U.S. patients, access to medical records often difficult and costly

Getting access to your own medical records might be a lot harder than you think, a new study suggests. Even the top-ranked U.S. hospitals can make records requests arduous, according to the study published in JAMA Network Open. "This study quantified the everyday experience of many Americans trying to get access to personal health information from a hospital," said senior author Dr Harlan Krumholz, director of the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation at the Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut. "The law is very clear. People have a right to their data. They have a right to digital data without per page charges. Our study revealed that even at the very best places, there was an inconvenience, delay and often high cost."

French prosecutors step up probe into baby milk contamination at Lactalis

French prosecutors have decided to further an investigation into a salmonella outbreak at a Lactalis dairy factory that led to dozens of babies falling ill last year, the Paris prosecutor's office said on Tuesday. Following a preliminary inquiry launched last December, prosecutors have now opened a probe into possible deceit, failure by a food company to withdraw a product and unintended injury, the office said.

People rarely outgrow seafood allergies

A small study of children and adults in Canada suggests that fish and shellfish allergies don't usually resolve over time. Together with nut allergies, fish and shellfish sensitivities are the biggest causes of severe allergic reactions, the study team writes in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. But little is known about how long these seafood allergies last.

China bans pig imports from Japan, Belgium over swine fever

China banned imports of pigs, wild boars and products from Belgium after an outbreak of African swine fever, as well as imports from Japan after a regular swine fever outbreak, the General Administration of Customs said on Tuesday. The move follows a similar ban on imports from Bulgaria on Monday and comes as the northeastern province of Liaoning reported a second outbreak of highly contagious African swine fever in two days.

J&J's Stelara succeeds in chronic bowel disease study

Johnson & Johnson said on Tuesday its blockbuster drug Stelara was found to be effective in treating a chronic bowel disease in a late-stage trial. Two doses of Stelara, already approved for psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis and Crohn's disease, was tested in 961 patients with moderate-to-severe ulcerative colitis (UC) who had failed prior therapy.

New WHO regional chief must battle lifestyle conditions, tropical diseases

Western Pacific health ministers picked a Japanese doctor as the next regional director of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday, spearheading a campaign to rein in lifestyle diseases linked to obesity and eradicate some tropical diseases by 2020. Beginning next year, Hiroshima-born Takeshi Kasai, 53, will use his five-year term to tackle growing concern over lifestyle diseases, which officials blame for 80 per cent of deaths among the 1.9 billion people of the western Pacific.

(With inputs from agencies.)