Reuters Health News Summary
Following is a summary of current health news briefs.
Email campaign asks McDonald's to take U.S. antibiotic curbs global
A charity looking to fight the rise of dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria on Thursday asked the public to help convince McDonald's restaurants around the world to stop serving meat and milk from animals raised with routine use of medically important antibiotics. A week after the world's biggest fast-food company took that step with poultry at its U.S. restaurants, U.K.-based ShareAction launched an online campaign enabling people to email McDonald's Corp CEO Steve Easterbrook.
U.S. House Democrats' Pelosi: administration may shift funds for Zika
U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the Obama administration may announce as early as Thursday that it is shifting more money into fighting the Zika virus. "Maybe today or tomorrow," Pelosi told reporters in a hallway on Thursday. She did not give an amount, but said, "I think they are going to try to do it a piece at a time, hoping that something else will happen," an apparent reference to the administration's request that the Republican-led Congress approve a funding bill to combat the virus.
Canada to allow medical patients to grow own cannabis
Medical marijuana patients in Canada will be allowed to grow a limited amount of cannabis for their own use or designate someone to grow it for them, the government said on Thursday. The government had been given six months to comply with a federal court ruling that struck down the previous administration's ban on medical patients' growing cannabis.
DEA denies petition to reclassify marijuana: Federal Register
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on Thursday denied requests to loosen the classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no medical use. The Department of Health and Human Services "concluded that marijuana has a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medical use in the United States, and lacks an acceptable level of safety for use even under medical supervision," the DEA said in a letter on the issue.
Required translators missing from many U.S. hospitals
Nearly one-third of U.S. hospitals fail to offer interpreters to patients who speak limited English, although federal law requires it, a new study shows. "People have a right to hear a cancer diagnosis in a language they understand, not through hand gestures," lead author Melody Schiaffino said in a telephone interview.
Sleep apnea may worsen liver disease for obese teens
For teens with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), breathing disruptions during sleep may worsen scarring in the liver, according to a new study. Researchers found that among obese adolescents with NAFLD, those with the most severe liver disease also had the most severe sleep disordered breathing that caused them to experience periods of low oxygen at night.
AstraZeneca wins UK cost approval for longer use of heart drug
Long term use of AstraZeneca's blood thinner Brilinta has been recommended as a cost-effective option for treating patients after a heart attack, Britain's healthcare cost watchdog NICE said on Friday. Ticagrelor 60 mg -- sold in Britain as Brilique for just under 1 pound ($1.30) a pill -- could help "many thousands of people" when given twice a day alongside aspirin, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said.
Many children's heart health not up to standards
Babies are generally born with healthy hearts that should be cared for during childhood to ensure good health later in life, according to the American Heart Association. Yet many U.S. children don't meet seven basic standards of good heart health, the AHA says in a statement in the journal Circulation.
Gilead to get attorney fees in hepatitis C patent fight with Merck
Gilead Sciences Inc is entitled to receive the attorney fees it incurred related to hepatitis C patent litigation with drugmaker Merck & Co Inc, a U.S. district judge has ruled. In June, Gilead was freed from paying up $200 million in damages for infringing two Merck patents related to Gilead's blockbuster drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni, after a U.S. judge found a pattern of misconduct by Merck including lying under oath and other unethical practices.
U.S. government shifts $81 million to Zika vaccine research
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has shifted $81 million in funds from other projects to continue work on developing vaccines to fight Zika in the absence of any funding from U.S. lawmakers. In a letter addressed to Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat and minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell said she was allocating $34 million in funding to the National Institutes of Health and $47 million to the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to work on Zika vaccines.
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