Health News Roundup: Pfizer agrees to pay $93 million to settle Lipitor antitrust lawsuit; Denali-Sanofi's ALS drug fails to meet mid-stage trial goal and more

Shares of Denali were down nearly 8% in morning trading. Gilead Sciences pauses enrollment for cancer treatment in solid tumor trials Gilead Sciences said on Thursday enrollments to test its cancer drug, magrolimab, on solid tumors had been paused globally, a week after the U.S. regulator put some studies on hold following increased risk of patient deaths.

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

Telemedicine abortion is as safe, effective as in-person care, US study finds

Abortion pills sent to pregnant women after video call or text message consultations are as safe and effective as in-person care, according to a large study from the United States, where access to abortion has been markedly curtailed in recent years. Since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2022 to eliminate the nationwide right to abortion, at least 14 U.S. states have put in place outright abortion bans while many others prohibit abortion after a certain duration of pregnancy.

Pfizer agrees to pay $93 million to settle Lipitor antitrust lawsuit

Pfizer has agreed to pay $93 million to settle antitrust claims by wholesale drug distributors that accused it of conspiring with India's Ranbaxy Laboratories to delay sales of less expensive, generic versions of the cholesterol drug Lipitor. Attorneys for Lipitor purchasers including Rochester Drug Co-Operative Inc and Puerto Rico's Drogueria Betances LLC disclosed the agreement in a filing on Wednesday in U.S. court in Trenton, New Jersey.

Trump privately favors 16-week national abortion ban, New York Times reports

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has privately expressed support for a 16-week national abortion ban, with exceptions in cases of rape, incest or risk to a mother's life, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing two sources.

The Trump campaign issued a statement in response to what it called a "fake" article.

US FDA to review Sarepta's Duchenne gene therapy for traditional approval

Sarepta Therapeutics said on Friday that the US FDA would review an application seeking traditional approval for its gene therapy to treat a muscle-wasting disorder by June 21, months after it failed the main goal of a confirmatory trial. Shares of the company rose nearly 11% in morning trading. They briefly fell in October after data from the confirmatory study, but have recovered losses since then.

Gaza doctors measure children for malnutrition

Medical workers held strips of plastic around the upper arms of small children in a Rafah tent, measuring the circumferences of their arms for signs of wasting flesh as a hunger crisis hits Gaza after months of Israel's military campaign there. One small girl of two and a half years had tiny arms, the skin already starting to hang loose after her weight plummeted from 11kg before the conflict to just 7kg now, said her mother Hana Tabash.

Daiichi invests 1 billion eur near Munich to make precision cancer drugs

Daiichi Sankyo said on Friday it would invest about 1 billion euros ($1.07 billion) to expand a site near Munich, Germany, to boost its work on precision cancer drugs. The expansion project marks another welcome win to shore up the government's economic credentials after U.S. drugmaker Eli Lilly in November pledged to invest 2.3 billion euros to make obesity and diabetes drugs in Germany, even as the country is likely to see a second year of recession in 2024.

Exclusive-Wegovy fuels sharp rise in use of weight-loss drugs for US youth

A small but rapidly growing number of U.S. adolescents began treatment with Novo Nordisk's weight-loss drug Wegovy last year, a powerful new tool to address record rates of pediatric obesity, according to data shared exclusively with Reuters. In the first 10 months of 2023, 1,268 children ages 12 to 17 with an obesity diagnosis started taking Wegovy, according to U.S. insurance claims data compiled by health technology company Komodo Health.

Denali-Sanofi's ALS drug fails to meet mid-stage trial goal

Drug developer Denali Therapeutics said on Friday its and partner Sanofi's experimental drug for a fatal neurodegenerative disease failed to slow decline of motor function in a mid-stage study. Shares of Denali were down nearly 8% in morning trading.

Gilead Sciences pauses enrollment for cancer treatment in solid tumor trials

Gilead Sciences said on Thursday enrollments to test its cancer drug, magrolimab, on solid tumors had been paused globally, a week after the U.S. regulator put some studies on hold following increased risk of patient deaths. Gilead is reviewing the benefit-risk of magrolimab across all ongoing trials and will provide an update on this assessment as soon as possible, it said

England's NHS to trim main healthcare wait list ahead of election

England's health service will move about 40,000 pending child consultations for ADHD, autism and other conditions from its main waiting list, a person with direct knowledge of the change said, trimming the politically sensitive list ahead of an expected election. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose Conservative Party is trailing the Labour Party in opinion polls, has vowed to reduce wait times in the state-run National Health Service (NHS). He admitted last week he had not made enough progress, blaming strikes by healthcare workers.