Health News Roundup: Novartis heart drug fails trial; U.S. judge blocks Medicaid work requirements in New Hampshire

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

U.S. judge blocks Medicaid work requirements in New Hampshire

A federal judge on Monday overturned the Trump administration's approval of a plan by the state of New Hampshire to impose work requirements on people seeking to obtain benefits from the Medicaid health insurance program. The ruling by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., came after the judge earlier this year blocked the Republican-led states of Arkansas and Kentucky from moving forward with similar plans.

Most traumatic brain injuries in U.S. kids linked to consumer products

The majority of the more than four million traumatic brain injuries in kids treated in U.S. emergency rooms involved consumer products, a new study suggests. Brain injuries in younger children were tied to products such as beds and flooring, while injuries in older kids were tied to sports, such as football, basketball and bicycling, researchers reported in Brain Injury.

Novartis heart drug fails trial, curbing growth prospects

Novartis's heart failure drug Entresto failed a trial in a new use, the Swiss drugmaker said on Monday, calling into question billions of dollars in potential revenue and taking the shine off one of the company's biggest growth prospects. The drug, already approved for reduced fraction heart failure, "narrowly missed" its objectives when tested on patients with preserved ejection fraction type of heart disease which affects 13 million globally, roughly half of all heart failure patients, the company said in a statement.

U.S. records 16 new measles cases as outbreak shows signs of slowing

The United States recorded 16 new measles cases between July 18 and July 25, federal health officials said on Monday, as the spread of the disease, which has infected 1,164 people this year in the worst U.S. outbreak since 1992, shows signs of slowing. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the new cases represented a 1.4% increase in the number of cases of the highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease since the previous week.

New York state decriminalizes pot, stops short of Cuomo's legalization call

New York state on Monday decriminalized recreational marijuana use, meaning possession of small amounts of the drug will be punished with fines rather than jail time, a step short of Governor Andrew Cuomo's goal of legalizing pot. Cuomo said the measure would also allow a mechanism for clearing the records of people who had been criminally convicted of possessing small amounts of marijuana.