Reuters Health News Summary

Following is a summary of current health news briefs. Explainer: Amid U.S. measles outbreak, who needs an additional dose of the vaccine?

The United States is in the midst of its largest measles outbreak in 25 years, with the disease mainly hitting people who have failed to receive the recommended two doses of the live measles vaccine. While the vast majority of measles patients are unvaccinated children, up to 10 percent of patients in the current outbreak are adults who received at least one dose of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. U.S. doctors use medical records to fight measles outbreak

U.S. doctors are tapping into their electronic medical records to identify unvaccinated patients and potentially infected individuals to help contain the worst U.S. measles outbreak in 25 years. New York's NYU Langone Health network of hospitals and medical offices treats patients from both Rockland County and Brooklyn, two epicenters of the outbreak. It has built alerts into its electronic medical records system to notify doctors and nurses that a patient lives in an outbreak area, based on their Zip code. UK's Vectura wins patent infringement case against GlaxoSmithKline in U.S

British drugmaker Vectura Group Plc said on Saturday that it won a patent infringement litigation case against GlaxoSmithKline Plc in the United States and has been awarded $89.7 million in damages for the period from August 2016 through December 2018. A jury trial in a Delaware district court on Friday found that one of Vectura's U.S. patents was infringed by sales of three of GSK's Ellipta products in the United States, Vectura said. Pfizer gets U.S. approval for $225,000 a year heart drug

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved Pfizer Inc's oral drug, tafamidis, to treat a rare and fatal heart disease called transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy, the U.S drugmaker said. Pfizer, which has touted tafamidis as a potential blockbuster product, set a list price of $225,000 a year for the medicine, which would be sold under the brand name Vyndaqel. It is the first approved medicine for the disease in the United States. Get your children vaccinated or face fine: German health minister

German Health Minister Jens Spahn has drawn up draft legislation to oblige parents to get their children vaccinated against measles or else face fines and their exclusion from daycare. Spahn's initiative comes amid a highly charged debate in Germany about whether the measles vaccine should be obligatory, and as the number of cases of the once-eradicated disease in the United States hit the highest levels since 2000.