Health News Roundup: French breast implant case, Ebola response tightens in Congo

Top court rules against German certifier in French breast implant case

France's highest court threw out on Wednesday a 2015 ruling that cleared a German certifier of negligence after it approved faulty breast implants produced with counterfeit silicone. The Court of Cassation rejected the ruling by a lower appeals court that had overturned a negligence conviction against TUV Rheinland for its role in approving the implants made by Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) until the French firm shut in 2010.

AcelRx shares surge after FDA staff says opioid safe

AcelRx Pharmaceuticals Inc's shares surged 30 per cent on Wednesday after U.S. Food and Administration staff said the company's opioid treatment was safe and effective, bringing it one step closer to a marketing approval. The FDA declined to approve the drug - Dsuvia - last October, seeking additional safety data and asking for certain changes in directions of use to ensure that the drug is administered properly.

Ebola response tightens in eastern Congo as seven new cases confirmed: health ministry

Congolese authorities announced a ban on Wednesday on harbouring suspected Ebola patients and promised police protection for health workers at burials, in a bid to fight back against local resistance to efforts to combat the disease. Residents of eastern Congo have attacked health workers and refused to cooperate with government efforts to combat Ebola there, the country's second major outbreak of the disease this year, which is believed to have killed 118 people since July.

Third African swine fever case in China's Liaoning province this week

A new outbreak of African swine fever has been detected in China's northeastern Liaoning province, the agriculture ministry said on Thursday, the province's third case this week. The latest outbreak was found on a farm with 1,353 pigs in the city of Dalian. The fever killed 11 pigs and infected 20 others, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said on its website.

Nail polishes often claim falsely to be toxin-free

Although nail polish manufacturers have begun removing some toxic ingredients, their labels are not always accurate and the reformulated products aren't necessarily safer, suggests a new study. "We were trying to learn more about what ingredients were in nail polish, and the more we dug deep into the labels, the more confused I was about the health claims, which I knew would be confusing for consumers and nail salon workers, too," said lead author Anna Young of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

U.S. FDA panel backs Celltrion copycat of Roche blood cancer drug

Celltrion Pharm Inc's biosimilar of Roche Holding AG's blockbuster cancer drug, Rituxan, on Wednesday, won unanimous backing from an advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The tussles in the biosimilars market are a growing focus for investors, with soaring valuations for some pioneers in the field, including Celltrion, and worries about the long-term sales threat to makers of the original drugs such as Roche and AbbVie.

Bristol-Myers to invest in Compugen, collaborate in clinical trials

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Israel's Compugen said on Thursday they will collaborate in clinical trials for patients with advanced solid tumours. The trials will evaluate the safety and tolerability of Compugen's COM701, an investigational antibody, in combination with Bristol-Myers Squibb's immune checkpoint inhibitor Opdivo.

Social media may reduce depression risk for older people with pain

Online socializing may weaken the tie between pain and depression for older people, a U.S. study suggests. People in chronic pain are at risk of depression to start with. When pain makes them stay home more, interacting with friends and family less, it only adds to this risk, the researchers write in the Journals of Gerontology, Series B.

Irregular heartbeat tied to increased risk for dementia

Having a type of irregular heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation (AF) may raise an individual's risk of developing dementia, but treating AF with blood thinners seems to reduce that risk, researchers say. The study team found that atrial fibrillation raises the overall risk of developing dementia by 40 per cent and the risk of vascular and mixed dementias by nearly 90 per cent. But people with AF who got anti-clotting drugs were 60 per cent less likely than those who didn't get the drugs to develop dementia, according to the report in Neurology.

Child refugees in Nauru camp struggle to eat, drink, talk: MSF

The mental health of refugees detained by Australia on the Pacific island of Nauru has deteriorated so badly that some children are in a "semi-comatose state", unable to eat, drink or talk, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday. Nauru is one of two Pacific nations where Australia detains hundreds of asylum seekers intercepted while trying to reach the country by boat, a policy widely criticized by the United Nations and rights groups.

(With inputs from Reuters)