The neuraminidase inhibitor laninamivir, made by Biota Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Alpharetta, Ga., failed to perform better than a placebo at alleviating influenza symptoms in a phase 2 trial, the company said in a press release today, adding that it will no longer develop the drug.
New York's Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is not required to hold public hearings on the safety of feeding antibiotics at subtherapeutic levels to food animals, a decision that advocates called a blow to public health, Food Safety News (FSN) reported today.
Overall funding for fiscal year 2014 will be $840 million — a $76 million cut.
The World Health Assembly (WHA) again did not decide on when the last laboratory stocks of variola virus, the pathogen that causes smallpox, should be destroyed, Nature reported today on its news blog.
In a moment that health officials have anticipated, the Florida Department of Health (FDH) today reported three cases of mosquito-borne chikungunya fever, all imported from the current 45,000-plus-case outbreak in the Caribbean.
The lab, completed in 2008 but held up over challenges, cleared two more obstacles yesterday.
Plans for the US government's "Generation 3" automated system to test the air for dangerous pathogens in US cities under the BioWatch program have been canceled over concerns about its cost and effectiveness, it was revealed recently.
Guinea's health ministry has reported six more cases in the country's Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, lifting the total to 224, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in an update yesterday.
So far, of 202 patients tested, 121 have been lab confirmed, the agency said. Two more deaths have been reported, pushing that number to 143, an increase of 2 since the WHO's previous update on Apr 25.
Saudi Arabian officials today reported four Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) cases in Riyadh, one of them fatal and the other three severe enough to require intensive care.
Guinea has reported 10 more suspected or confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD), along with three more deaths. Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO), said today in a Twitter post that the developments push the country's overall outbreak total to 137 illnesses, 86 of them fatal.