Health News Roundup: Congo approves clinical trials for Ebola treatments; ICU stay can lead to depression

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

Later school start may help teens get needed sleep

Letting teens start school just 10 minutes later each day might help them get more than 20 minutes extra sleep on a typical night, a Canadian study suggests. While that might not sound like much, for some sleep-deprived adolescents this might be enough of a difference to help them get the minimum recommended eight hours of shuteye a night, researchers note in Sleep Medicine.

China's Xiamen airlines to stop serving pork on flights due to African swine fever

China's Xiamen airlines said it would stop serving pork on flights from Nov. 24 due to African swine fever outbreaks, CAAC News, a publication run by China's aviation regulator, reported on Friday. The world's top pig producer has reported more than 70 cases of the deadly disease since early August, including one outbreak found in wild boar.

Dining out with food allergies may be safer with at least 15 precautions

A survey of people with food allergies who dine out successfully has found they employ quite a few strategies. Those who never had an allergic reaction in a restaurant tended to employ an average of 15 strategies to avoid allergens, while those who have had a reaction tended to use only six different strategies before suffering a problem, researchers found.

China worries about hog supply as African swine fever reaches Beijing

China will adjust its rules on controlling the spread of African swine fever to keep pork supplies stable, said an official on Friday, even as the country reported the first cases of the disease to be discovered in its capital. The highly contagious disease was found on two farms in a southwestern district of sprawling Beijing.

Congo approves clinical trials for Ebola treatments

Congolese authorities have authorized clinical trials for four experimental Ebola treatments, which will allow researchers to collect valuable data about their effectiveness, the health ministry said on Saturday. Health workers have already administered therapeutic treatments to more than 150 Ebola patients since August in an effort to contain the worst of Democratic Republic of Congo's 10 outbreaks of the hemorrhagic fever since 1976.

U.S. benefits manager baulks after Novartis values gene therapy at $4-5 million

Just weeks after Novartis floated the idea that $4-5 million was fair value for its new gene therapy against a deadly neuromuscular disease, a major benefits manager is pushing back. The Swiss drugmaker's assessment of AVXS-101's value for treating spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) has put the company front-and-center in the debate over what "super drugs", for rare diseases afflicting relatively few patients, are really worth.

ICU stay can lead to depression

Patients who are treated in an intensive care unit (ICU) and survive are at increased risk of depression, a new study suggests. And depression in ICU survivors was linked with a higher risk of death in the next two years, researchers found. More than half of former ICU patients reported symptoms of psychological disorders, including anxiety, depression and PTSD, according to the study published in Critical Care.

Even when families have issues, eating together can improve teen diets

Teens whose families eat dinner together are more likely to make healthy food choices, even when kids and parents have issues with communicating and connecting emotionally, a new study finds. More frequent family dinners were associated with more healthful eating among teens and young adults, even when families were not especially close and had trouble managing daily routines, researchers report in JAMA Network Open.

Novartis's pricing might be tested with costly eye therapy

Novartis's price-setting muscle is about to be tested after it won European Union approval for a blindness-fighting gene therapy whose $850,000 list cost in the United States has been labeled too expensive by some groups. Luxturna, sold by Spark Therapeutics in the United States and by Novartis elsewhere after the Swiss drugmaker bought the rights, is a one-time treatment for a rare genetic disease that causes blindness in about 1 in 200,000 people.

(With inputs from Reuters)

(With inputs from agencies.)