Reuters Health News Summary

Following is a summary of current health news briefs. Premium New Zealand honey producer admits adding chemicals: media

A New Zealand company pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges of adding artificial chemicals to its premium manuka honey, media reported, in a flagship prosecution over a product that is high-value export for the country. New Zealand Food Safety filed the case against Auckland-based Evergreen Life Ltd whose products were pulled from shelves in 2016 by the Ministry for Primary Industries, which said they might contain "non-approved substances". Many older U.S. gun owners don't store firearms safely

Roughly one-third of older people in the U.S. may live in households with guns and a new study suggests that many of those firearms are not stored in the safest way: locked and unloaded. Researchers examined survey data from 4,428 men and women aged 65 and older in Washington State. Overall, 1,696 participants, or 39 percent, lived in households with firearms, researchers report in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Judge upholds New York City's mandatory measles vaccination order

A Brooklyn judge on Thursday ruled against a group of parents who challenged New York City's recently imposed mandatory measles vaccination order, rejecting their arguments that the city's public health authority exceeded its authority. In a six-page decision rendered hours after a hearing on the matter, Judge Lawrence Knipel denied the parents' petition seeking to lift the vaccination order, imposed last week to stem the worst measles outbreak to hit the city since 1991. U.S. launches four-state study to find ways to reduce opioid overdose deaths

U.S. health officials on Thursday said they will spend $350 million in four states to study ways to best deal with the nation's opioid crisis on the local level, with a goal of reducing opioid-related overdose deaths by 40 percent over three years in selected communities in those states. The National Institutes of Health will award grants to research sites in Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said at a news conference to unveil the plan. They will go to the University of Kentucky, Boston Medical Center, Columbia University and Ohio State University. Ebola survivors comfort sick and frightened in Congo outbreak

Wearing a disposable gown and gloves for protection, Jeanine Masika cradles a 2-year-old Ebola patient and offers the listless toddler teaspoons of brown soup. Most health care workers need a surgical mask, goggles, hooded coveralls, an apron, rubber boots and two pairs of gloves to avoid catching the virus that typically kills around half those it infects. China says African swine fever found on Hainan island

China said on Friday that it had confirmed outbreaks of African swine fever in two locations in Hainan province, an island off the country's southern coast which it had hoped to keep free of the contagious disease. The disease, fatal to pigs but harmless in humans, was found on two small pig farms in Danzhou city and two farms in Wanning city. African swine fever has now been found in every province and region on the mainland, including Hainan island, since it was first detected in August 2018. Lower dose of Pfizer-Lilly painkiller misses main goals in late stage study

A lower dose of non-opioid painkiller developed by Pfizer Inc and Eli Lilly and Co failed to meet main goals in a late-stage study in patients with moderate-to-severe osteoarthritis of the hip or knee, the companies said on Thursday. The drug, tanezumab, belongs to a new category of pain medications that target nerve growth factor, a protein involved in the growth of nerve cells, and has been touted as a potential blockbuster. Yale study revives cellular activity in pig brains hours after death

Yale University scientists have succeeded in restoring basic cellular activity in pigs' brains hours after their deaths in a finding that may one day lead to advances in treating human stroke and brain injuries, researchers reported on Wednesday. The scientists emphasized that their work did not even come close to reawakening consciousness in the disembodied pig brains. In fact the experiment was specifically designed to avoid such an outcome, however improbable. Dozens of doctors in Appalachia charged in opioid fraud bust

Dozens of medical professionals in Appalachia, a region hard-hit by the U.S. opioid crisis, have been charged with writing hundreds of thousands of illegal prescriptions and committing health care fraud, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday. Sixty people, including 31 doctors, were accused of illegally prescribing opioid drugs in exchange for cash and sexual favors in the rural, mountainous region stretching from Pennsylvania and West Virginia to Alabama and Louisiana.