Health News Roundup: A million people a day get sexual infections; app to improve attention skills

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals expands into Duchenne gene therapy with new deals

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc said http://pdf.reuters.com/htmlnews/htmlnews.asp?i=43059c3bf0e37541&u=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20190606:nBw4wRKsa on Thursday it would acquire privately held Exonics Therapeutics for an upfront payment of $245 million and potential milestone payments of up to $750 million. Exonics Therapeutics develops gene editing therapies to treat patients with severe genetic neuromuscular diseases.

App helps people learn to meditate, improves attention skills

(Reuters Health) - An experimental app may help people learn to meditate, which in turn yields improvements in attention span and working memory, a new study suggests. Over the course of six weeks a group of young adults who used the app, which is designed to tailor the length of sessions through interactions with its user, were able to increase the amount of time spent in meditation.

One in four Ebola cases undetected in Congo: WHO

Roughly a quarter of Ebola infections in eastern Congo are estimated to be going undetected or found too late, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert said on Thursday. But the WHO, in a weekly update issued subsequently, said there were "early signs" of an easing of the intensity with which the virus is spreading following weeks of insecurity that curbed access to communities and interrupted vaccination.

Missouri secretary of state blocks 'heartbeat' abortion law referendum

A move to authorize a referendum over Missouri's recently enacted ban on abortions after the eighth week of pregnancy hit a roadblock on Thursday when the secretary of state rejected petitions filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri and others to get the issue to the ballot. The rejection of the petitions by Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft was immediately challenged by abortion rights advocates, who sued Ashcroft on Thursday for "trying to deprive Missourians of their right to weigh in on the abortion question with a vote," said Tony Rothert, executive director of the ACLU. As pressure for Afghan peace grows, drug threat remains

Mohammad Ahmadi, a young opium farmer in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar has the kind of confidence that underlines how meager the results have been of years of effort and billions of dollars spent fighting narcotics. "I'm not afraid of anyone. No one can harm me and the others while we're harvesting poppy," he said as he took a break from working his field.

Will Europe's clampdown on faulty medical devices hurt patients?

When a Californian company founded by a U.S. veteran wounded in Afghanistan sought to register a new medical device this year, it turned to Europe before the United States. The European approvals system had long been quicker, the company said, but the introduction of new rules is changing all that. "Now it has flipped," said Bill Colone, CEO of San Clemente-based Spinal Singularity, which hopes to launch a 'smart' catheter for men with spinal injuries or disease early next year after squeezing in its application under the old European rules.

A million people a day get sexual infections, WHO warns

More than a million people every day worldwide catch a sexually transmitted infection, with rates of chlamydia, gonorrhoea, trichomoniasis and syphilis the most worrying, the World Health Organization said on Thursday. The vast majority of the infections are easily preventable and curable, but some diseases - in particular gonorrhoea - are evolving into super-bug forms and that are increasingly difficult to treat with antibiotics, the WHO said in a report.

Young adults see less harm in tobacco products, prefer online health information

Young adults may be more likely than older folks to go online to find health information, and less likely to view tobacco products as "very harmful," according to survey results compiled to inform U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulatory policy. "According to this study, young adults are particularly susceptible to E. Cig(s) and, among non-smoking young adults, vulnerable to cigarette smoking," the study's author Dr. Janiper Kwak-Chae of Stony Brook School of Medicine in New York, said by email.

Unit of drugmaker Insys to plead guilty to U.S. opioid bribe scheme

A unit of Insys Therapeutics Inc is set to plead guilty on Friday to fraud charges as part of an $225 million deal with the U.S. Justice Department resolving claims that the drugmaker bribed doctors to prescribe an addictive opioid medication. The expected plea in federal court in Boston by the Chandler, Arizona-based Insys' operating subsidiary is coming in one of the few criminal prosecutions to date of a corporation accused of helping fuel the nation's deadly opioid epidemic.

FDA advisory panel recommends approval of TB Alliance's tuberculosis treatment

Independent experts of an FDA advisory panel voted in favor of the not-for-profit TB Alliance's treatment for drug resistant tuberculosis, as a part of a three-drug combination regimen. The panel on Tuesday voted 14-4 when asked to assess the treatment, pretomanid, in combination with Johnson & Johnson's bedaquiline and linezolid for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB).