Reuters Health News Summary

Following is a summary of current health news briefs. Almost half of U.S. heart disease patients struggle with medical bills

Roughly 45 percent of Americans under 65 who have cardiovascular disease experience financial hardships from medical bills, a U.S. study suggests. And, almost one in five of them can't afford to pay their medical bills at all. Turn it down! Millennials' music habit puts their hearing at risk: U.N.

A generation of music-lovers are damaging their hearing with audio players that do not limit dangerously high noise levels, the U.N. health agency said on Tuesday. Already 466 million people worldwide have debilitating hearing loss, up from 360 million in 2010 and the figure is expected to nearly double to 900 million, or one in every 10 people by 2050, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. Gilead misses key goal in NASH liver disease trial, shares sink

Gilead Sciences Inc said on Monday that a late-stage study of a key experimental drug aimed at treating NASH, a progressive fatty liver disease, failed to meet its main goal, sending the company's shares down 4.6 percent in after-hours trading. The study compared the drug, called selonsertib, with a placebo treatment in a trial of nearly 900 patients with compensated cirrhosis, an advanced form of Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis, or NASH. Indivior loses U.S. district court battle, copycat launches imminent

Generic competitors to British drugmaker Indivior Plc's blockbuster opioid addiction treatment are on course to launch sales next week after the firm's attempt to stay a U.S. District court judgement was rejected. The company said on Tuesday it would file a repeat motion to the Supreme Court, after having said last week that it faces rapid losses in market share "in the immediate future" to generic versions of Suboxone. U.S. FDA panel recommends approval of Johnson & Johnson's depression drug

An advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday recommended Johnson & Johnson's experimental nasal spray, which has a compound similar to often-abused ketamine, for patients suffering from depression. The panel voted 14-2 in favor of the drug esketamine, developed to treat major depression in patients who have not benefited from at least two different therapies, saying its benefits outweighed the risks. One member in the panel abstained from voting. Better breast cancer screening, treatments may have saved hundreds of thousands of lives over 30 years

Over the last three decades, improved screening and treatments may have kept hundreds of thousands of women from dying of breast cancer, computer simulations suggest. Depending on the simulation, anywhere from 305,000 to more than 600,000 breast cancer deaths may have been averted, researchers reported in Cancer. Catalyst Pharma sees net price of drug, once free, topping $300,000

Catalyst Pharmaceuticals Inc said on Monday that it expects its drug for a rare disease, which had long been available to patients for free, will cost more than $300,000 per year including rebates to insurers and other discounts. The drug, Firdapse, is used to treat Lambert-Eaton Myasthenic Syndrome (LEMS), a rare neuromuscular disorder. Sanofi and Regeneron cut list price of cholesterol drug by 60 percent

Sanofi SA and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc said on Monday that they will slash the U.S. list price of their potent but expensive cholesterol fighter Praluent by 60 percent, as the drugmakers follow a similar move by rival Amgen Inc in hopes of increasing use of the drug. The new list price for Praluent will be $5,850 a year, matching the price Amgen set when it lowered the list of its competing drug, Repatha, in October. Merck, Pfizer combo treatment boosts kidney cancer survival

Drugmaker Merck & Co Inc said on Monday that the combination of its cancer immunotherapy Keytruda with Pfizer Inc's Inlyta cut the risk of death nearly in half for patients with the most common form of kidney cancer when compared with treatment with chemotherapy drug Sutent. Merck said the treatments when used as the initial treatment for advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) reduced the risk of death by about 47 percent in its late-stage trial. Mylan launches Advair generic at one-third price

Mylan NV on Tuesday priced its generic version of GlaxoSmithKline's blockbuster asthma treatment Advair 70 percent lower than the branded medicine. The treatment, the first generic of Advair, is approved in three doses and will be priced between $93.71 and $153.14, the company said.