Reuters Health News Summary

Following is a summary of current health news briefs. 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. Researchers discover how sleep helps the body fight germs

It looks like your mother was right: when you've got a cold, sleep may be the best medicine. German researchers have discovered one way sleep improves the body's ability to fight off a cold. Sleep, it seems, strengthens the potency of certain immune cells by improving their chances of attaching to-and eventually destroying-cells infected with viruses. Johnson & Johnson's nasal spray for depression wins FDA panel backing

An advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday voted in favor of Johnson & Johnson's experimental nasal spray, which has a compound similar to often-abused ketamine, bringing the drug closer to approval. 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 panel member 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. Eating lots of meat tied to higher risk of liver disease

People who eat a lot of animal protein may be more likely to have excessive fat in their livers and a higher risk of liver disease than individuals whose main source of protein is vegetables, a Dutch study suggests. Researchers focused on what's known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which is usually associated with obesity and certain eating habits. While dietary changes are recommended to treat this type of liver disease, research to date hasn't clearly demonstrated whether these changes can work for prevention. 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. Heart failure makes surgery riskier, even without symptoms

Even relatively healthy heart failure patients may still be more likely to die after surgery than people with healthier hearts, a U.S. study suggests. For heart failure patients with obvious symptoms, surgery has long been associated with a greater risk of complications and death. But the current study offers fresh evidence that even heart failure patients without symptoms have an increased mortality risk, said senior study author Dr. Sherry Wren, vice chair of surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of general surgery at Palo Alto Veterans Health Care System.