Health News Roundup: FDA warns against using Cardinal's syringes; UK drugmakers, government agree renewed revenue clawback scheme and more

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

FDA warns against using Cardinal's syringes

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday warned healthcare providers and facilities not to use Cardinal Health's Monoject syringes with patient-controlled pain management pumps and syringe pumps. The regulator's warning comes after Cardinal Health initiated a recall for its Monoject syringes due to incompatibility concerns with syringe pumps.

UK drugmakers, government agree renewed revenue clawback scheme

Britain's pharmaceutical industry and the government have agreed terms to renew a medicines access scheme that requires the companies to pay back part of their drug revenue generated from the national health service, they said on Monday.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) said in a joint statement that the scheme agreed with the government and National Health Service (NHS) England, will run for five years until end-2028.

US to offer more free COVID tests nationwide

The U.S. government on Monday will start taking orders for another round of free COVID-19 tests for delivery across the country, a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson said. Households that had ordered four free tests through COVIDTests.gov when they were offered again in September are eligible to order four more, while those that did not can submit two orders for a total of eight free tests.

US FDA to delay decision on Bristol Myers-2seventy bio cancer therapy

The U.S. health regulator will not meet its Dec. 16 deadline to decide on the expanded use of Bristol Myers Squibb and partner 2seventy bio's blood cancer therapy in earlier lines of treatment as it plans to seek the advice of experts, the companies said on Monday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not yet confirmed when the advisory panel would meet, they added.

Texas AG sues Pfizer over quality-control lapses in kids' ADHD drug

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused Pfizer and its supplier Tris Pharma of providing children's ADHD medicine that it knew might be ineffective to the state's Medicaid insurance program for low-income people, in a lawsuit unsealed on Monday. The lawsuit, filed in Harrison County, Texas District Court, alleges that Pfizer and Tris manipulated quality-control testing for the drug Quillivant XR in order to obtain passing results from tests it was required to perform under federal law between 2012 and 2018. Properly done tests frequently showed that the drug failed to dissolve as it was supposed to, a sign that it would not be released in the body as expected, the lawsuit said.

Bayer woes pile up as blood thinner drug trial fails

Germany's Bayer has aborted a large late-stage trial testing a new anti-clotting drug due to lack of efficacy, dealing a fresh blow to the embattled drugmaker and throwing its most promising development project in doubt. Its shares slid 16.4% at 0903 GMT on Monday to their lowest in 12 years, with separate news overnight the company had been ordered to pay $1.56 billion in the latest U.S. lawsuit over its commonly-used Roundup weedkiller also hitting sentiment.

Mother of autistic children lodges complaint over emissions from Sanofi's Depakine drug plant -Le Monde

The mother of two autistic children in France has lodged a legal complaint for endangering life after she suspected she was exposed to airborne emissions from Sanofi's Depakine epilepsy drug plant, the Le Monde newspaper reported on Monday.

Melanie S., whose children showed neuro-developmental disorders similar to those observed in children whose mothers took Depakine during pregnancy, has never used the drug but since 2011 she has worked in an office located some 50 metres from the plant in Mourenx, southwest France, the paper said.

Researchers return to Alzheimer's vaccines, buoyed by recent drug success

Breakthrough Alzheimer’s treatments that remove toxic proteins from the brain have revived interest in vaccines to treat the memory-robbing disease, potentially offering a cheaper, easy-to-administer option for millions of people, according to interviews with 10 scientists and company executives. Clinical trials are underway or completed for at least seven Alzheimer’s vaccines designed to harness the immune system to rid the brain of the disease-related proteins beta amyloid or tau, a review of the U.S. government’s ClinicalTrials.gov database found. More are on the way.

S.Africa's Astral Foods swings to loss on $109 million electricity, bird flu hit

South Africa's biggest poultry producer Astral Foods swung to a full-year loss on Monday, as an ongoing electricity crisis and the country's worst bird flu outbreak cost the company 2 billion rand ($108.9 million). Astral reported a 621 million rand operating loss in the full-year ended Sept. 30, compared to a 1.4 billion rand profit last year. Its flagship poultry division's 1.38 billion rand loss was partly offset by a 759 million rand profit from its feed division, which saw 12% revenue growth.

Wegovy craze was all the rage on Q3 earnings calls

Weight loss was the talk of this earnings season, making names such as Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro the water-cooler discussion that companies across the globe could not ignore. Analysts attended earnings calls in the third quarter armed with questions for healthcare and consumer companies about the potential effect on their sales from the growing popularity of these drugs, known as GLP-1 agonists.