News

A man has died and five others remain hospitalised after taking an experimental medicine as part of an early stage clinical study in France.

The NHS has yet again failed to hit some of its key performance targets, raising fears that problems are now deeply ingrained and that services are at risk of buckling under the pressure, particularly if colder whether sparks a spike in the number of patients needing medical attention.

UK patients with haemophilia A can now access a new, longer-acting treatment to keep bleeds under control, following the launch of Sobi and Biogen’s Elocta across the country.

Top-line data from a five-year trial of ALK’s allergy immunotherapy Grazax show that the pill failed to prevent the onset of asthma but offered other benefits such as reducing symptoms and medicines use.   

A major evaluation of the NHS Health Check – a national screening programme designed to gauge people’s risk of cardiovascular disease – has prevented 2,500 heart attacks and strokes, concludes a new evaluation by Queen Mary University.

Patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy will be disappointed with news that US regulators have rejected BioMarin’s experimental therapy Kyndrisa, dashing hopes of access to the first treatment specifically approved for the condition.

Public Health England has published a new Dementia Profile that allows, for the first time, tailored comparison between local authorities and Clinical Commissioning Groups in England through a single interactive online platform.

Giving healthy gay men in the UK HIV drugs before they are exposed to the virus could prevent “a large number” of cases and thus significantly reduce incidence of the disease, claims new research funded by Public Health England and published in The Lancet. 

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has updated tuberculosis guidelines under a drive to eradicate the disease from the country.

Pfizer is linking arms with non-profit group The California Institute for Biomedical Research in a collaboration focused on the development of novel antibody-based therapeutics for heart failure. 

AstraZeneca’s biologics R&D arm MedImmune is strengthening its links with the University of California, San Francisco, in a research collaboration focused on respiratory, inflammation and autoimmunity.

Use of Roche’s high-speed heart attack test, which “drastically shortens” time to diagnosis and thus facilitates faster treatment and potentially better outcomes, has been validated in a three-year clinical trial involving more than 1,200 patients.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has published a new draft guideline to help healthcare professionals better recognise the signs of sepsis and thus accelerate access to treatment.

More than 4,000 operations across the National Health Service in England are reportedly being rescheduled as the first doctor’s strike in 40 years gets underway.

Eisai has submitted an application to market its oncology drug lenvatinib for the treatment of patients with renal cell carcinoma.