Health News Roundup: New H5N6 bird flu outbreak; concerns over Trevena opioid drug

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

China reports new H5N6 bird flu outbreak in Hunan province

China has registered a new case of H5N6 avian bird flu on a poultry farm in southern Hunan province, the Agriculture Ministry said on Tuesday. Local authorities culled 1,029 birds following the outbreak, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in a statement on its website.

China says efforts to control African swine fever outbreak in pivotal phase

China's agriculture ministry said on Tuesday that the country's African swine fever outbreak remains complex and severe, and prevention and control efforts are in a pivotal period. China has reported 28 cases of the highly contagious disease in eight provinces so far, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in a statement published on its website. The country's first African swine fever outbreak was found in the city of Shenyang in Liaoning province in early August.

FDA staff raises safety concerns over Trevena opioid drug

Staff reviewers of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday raised safety concerns over Trevena Inc's opioid injection to treat acute pain, saying the treatment has an abuse and overdose potential. The treatment, oliceridine, aims to manage moderate-to-severe acute pain in adult patients for whom an intravenous opioid is warranted.

Being aware of fetal movement doesn't prevent stillbirths

Encouraging pregnant women to be aware of reduced fetal movement and to report it promptly to their doctors does not reduce stillbirth risk, new findings show. "We cannot rely on reduced fetal movement awareness as a strategy to reduce stillbirth," Dr. Jane E. Norman of Queen's Medical Research Institute in Edinburgh, the study's first author, told Reuters Health via email.

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.

Bausch Health's plaque psoriasis lotion gets tentative FDA approval

Bausch Health Cos Inc, formerly Valeant Pharmaceuticals, said on Monday it received tentative U.S. approval to market its plaque psoriasis lotion, Bryhali. The company plans to launch the lotion in November after receiving final approval from the Food and Drug Administration, pending expiration of exclusivity for a related product, Bausch said in a statement.

India on alert as zika virus hits tourism hotspot of Jaipur

India has sent experts to try to contain an outbreak of the zika virus in the popular tourist destination of Jaipur, capital of the northern state of Rajasthan, with a close watch on pregnant women. Twenty-two people in the city have tested positive, the health ministry said. There is no vaccine to the virus which can cause severe birth defects in unborn children.

Brazil detects the form of swine fever in the remote region

An outbreak of a form of a viral hog disease known as "classical swine fever" has been confirmed in the northeastern state of Ceará, the Brazilian agriculture ministry said in a statement on Monday, adding it was unlikely to hurt the pork meat trade. The outbreak was confirmed on Oct. 6, more than 500 kilometres (310 miles) away from an area considered free of the disease by the World Organization for Animal Health, the government said.

(With inputs from agencies.)