17-10-2017  (Reuters) - A U.S. judge’s ruling on Monday invalidating Allergan Plc’s patents on its blockbuster $1.5 billion dry-eye medicine, Restasis, has cast doubt on the company’s novel strategy to enlist a Native American tribe to help shield those patents from challenge by generic drugmakers, legal experts said. In a deal announced last month, Allergan transferred the Restasis patents to New York state’s Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, claiming the group’s status as a sovereign nation meant the patents could not be reviewed by the U.S. patent office. Allergan said the move was justified because the same patents were already being... Read more17-10-2017 (Reuters Health) - Frail patients are more likely to have serious complications after elective outpatient surgery than people who are healthier and stronger, a recent study suggests. Much of the previous research linking physical frailty to worse surgical outcomes has been based on what happens when people have major elective or emergency operations in a hospital, researchers note in JAMA Surgery. For the current study, researchers examined data on almost 141,000 adults who had some common elective procedures that don’t require hospital admission, such as hernia repairs, breast surgery and thyroid procedures. While less than 1 percent of these patients... Read more17-10-2017 (Reuters Health) - Sick or injured men who receive blood transfusions may be more likely to die if their donor was a woman who has been pregnant in the past, a new study suggests. The reasons are unclear, and the study wasn’t focused on explaining them, but senior author Rutger Middelburg of Leiden University Medical Center in The Netherlands and colleagues write in JAMA that it’s possible antibodies women develop during pregnancy to protect their growing baby might later trigger dangerous reactions in some male recipients of blood from previously pregnant donors. “During pregnancy, the mother is exposed to her... Read more17-10-2017 (Reuters) - Johnson & Johnson posted better-than-expected third-quarter earnings, raising its full-year forecast due to growth from new cancer drugs and high-margin treatments picked up in its $30 billion acquisition of Actelion earlier this year.... Read more17-10-2017 (Reuters Health) - When pet owners need to flee from disasters like hurricanes and fires, they often think first of their animals, but a new study suggests a scarcity of pet-friendly emergency shelters could make older evacuees all the more vulnerable. The lack of sufficient emergency shelter to house evacuees along with their dogs and cats in Florida’s Miami-Dade metropolitan area may prolong older pet owners’ hesitation to leave home when a hurricane hits, researchers warn in the Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences. “We do need to make sure that we have pet-friendly accommodations available for people, that these accommodations... Read more17-10-2017 (Reuters) - UnitedHealth Group Inc, the largest U.S. health insurer, said earnings will grow 13 to 16 percent in 2018 as medical costs remain low, and that it expects to benefit from new insurance products backed by U.S. President Donald Trump. UnitedHealth, the industry bellwether, is the first health insurer to report and its third-quarter net earnings rose 26.3 percent, beating analysts’ expectations. Its shares rose more than 5 percent, also lifting rival insurers such as Anthem Inc, Aetna Inc, and Cigna Corp. Trump, who promised to repeal predecessor Barack Obama’s signature the Affordable Care Act - so-called Obamacare -... Read more17-10-2017 (Reuters) - Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday won the reversal of a $72 million verdict in favor of the family of a woman whose death from ovarian cancer they claimed stemmed from her use of the company’s talc-based products like Johnson’s Baby Powder.... Read more17-10-2017 (Reuters) - Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday won the reversal of a $72 million verdict in favor of the family of a woman whose death from ovarian cancer they claimed stemmed from her use of the company’s talc-based products like Johnson’s Baby Powder.... Read more
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