Health News Roundup: FDA warns against using Cardinal's syringes; Indian researchers find no link between sudden death and COVID shots and more

The outbreak infected five poultry among a flock of 19,600 on a farm in the county of Brodsko-Posavska near the Bosnian border, the Paris-based WOAH said in a report, citing Croatian authorities. 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.

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.

BioNTech says European Patent Office has declared Moderna patent invalid

COVID-19 vaccine maker BioNTech said on Tuesday the European Patent Office has declared as invalid an mRNA patent that has been invoked by Moderna in litigation about alleged an patent violation by BioNTech and its partner Pfizer. "We understand and welcome the European Patent Office's decision to revoke Moderna's European Patent 3 718 565 B1," the German biotech firm said in a statement.

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.

Indian researchers find no link between sudden death and COVID shots

Indian researchers found no evidence that COVID-19 vaccination was behind "unexplained sudden deaths", a medical organisation said on Tuesday, instead pointing to the disease itself, binge drinking and intense exercise as risk factors. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) conducted a study following what it called "anecdotal reports about sudden unexplained deaths among apparently healthy adults" aged 18 to 45 between October 2021 and March 2023.

Medtronic raises fiscal 2024 forecast on strong sales of surgical, diabetes devices

Medtronic beat second-quarter profit and revenue estimates and raised its annual earnings forecast on Tuesday, banking on strong sales in its surgical and diabetes units, sending its shares up 2% in premarket trading. Medical device makers are seeing higher demand for their products due to a steady recovery in surgical procedures that were deferred during the pandemic, especially by older adults, as well as easing staff shortages at hospitals.

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.

Croatia reports bird flu outbreak on poultry farm

Croatia has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus on a poultry farm, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) said on Tuesday. The outbreak infected five poultry among a flock of 19,600 on a farm in the county of Brodsko-Posavska near the Bosnian border, the Paris-based WOAH said in a report, citing Croatian authorities.

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.

BeiGene to buy global rights to Ensem's experimental cancer therapy

BeiGene said on Tuesday it would buy the global license for a cancer therapy that is ready to enter early-stage trial from U.S.-based biotech company Ensem Therapeutics. The Hong Kong-listed company will work with Ensem to bring the therapy, which works by blocking the enzyme, cyclin-dependent kinase 2, involved in cell growth, to trials.