<p style="text-align: justify;">Following is a summary of current health news briefs.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>EU drug regulator decides antibiotic shortage not a ‘major event'</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Europe’s drug regulator has decided not to label the antibiotic shortage on the continent a "major event", given existing measures to tackle the shortfall were working in the short term, it said in a statement on Thursday, A "major event" label would allow the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to coordinate action at a pan-European level and increase the reporting obligations of manufacturers.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>FDA identifies recall of Emergent’s decontamination kits as most serious</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday classified the recall of Emergent BioSolutions Inc’s skin decontamination lotion kits as the most serious type. The contract manufacturer began the recall of 3,500 units of the kit in November, after receiving three customer complaints of leakage from the packets. No serious injuries or deaths related to the issue were reported.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>California law aiming to curb COVID misinformation blocked by judge</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">A U.S. judge has blocked a California law that sought to penalize doctors who spread "misinformation or disinformation" about COVID-19 while he considers a pair lawsuits challenging it on free speech grounds. Senior U.S. District Judge William Shubb in Sacramento ruled on Wednesday that Assembly Bill 2098, which was signed last October by California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, was too vague for doctors to know what kind of statements might put them at risk of being penalized."COVID-19 is a quickly evolving area of science that in many aspects eludes consensus," he wrote.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>EU regulator accepts for review Alzheimer’s treatment from Eisai-Biogen</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Japanese drugmaker Eisai Co Ltd and Biogen Inc said on Thursday the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had accepted a marketing authorization application for their Alzheimer’s disease drug. The drug, lecanemab, which was recently granted accelerated approval in the United States, is an antibody that has been shown to remove sticky deposits of a protein called amyloid beta from the brains of patients in the early stages of the mind-wasting disease.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>FDA advisers back the same COVID vaccine for initial shots, boosters</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday unanimously voted in favor of targeting the same coronavirus strain for initial COVID-19 vaccine doses and boosters going forward, but some expressed skepticism about whether all Americans need to receive the shots annually. The agency is trying to simplify its COVID-19 vaccine policy as it considers whether to recommend Americans get an annual booster shot for the virus. But several members of the expert advisory group asked for more robust data on benefits of annual shots for younger, healthier people.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>U.S. CDC still looking at potential stroke risk from Pfizer bivalent COVID shot</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">New data from one U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) database shows a possible stroke risk link for older adults who received an updated Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 booster shot, but the signal is weaker than what the agency had flagged earlier in January, health officials said on Thursday. U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials said they had not detected a link between the shots and strokes in two other safety monitoring databases.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>U.S. FDA calls for new regulatory framework for use of cannabis compound CBD</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday it does not intend to make any new guidance on the use of the popular cannabis compound CBD in food and supplements, saying the United States needs to develop a new framework to ensure its safe use. The health regulator said it would work with Congress to develop a new, cross-agency regulatory framework. The FDA denied three citizen petitions that had requested the agency to provide guidance.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Anti-abortion protesters break into Walgreens AGM meeting room</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Anti-abortion protesters broke into the room where Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc held its annual shareholders meeting in Newport Coast, California on Thursday for its decision to start selling abortion pills, the pharmacy chain said. Walgreens and CVS Health Corp said on Jan. 4 that they plan to offer abortion pills following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to allow retail pharmacies to offer the drug in the country for the first time.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>U.S. FDA pulls authorization for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 treatment Evusheld</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The U.S. health regulator has withdrawn emergency-use authorization for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 antibody cocktail Evusheld as the treatment is not expected to neutralize the currently dominant XBB.1.5 subvariant of Omicron. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had limited Evusheld’s use earlier this month for the same reason and the agency’s Thursday announcement sent U.S. shares of London-based AstraZeneca down 1.31% to $65.75.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Roche launches new test to detect fast spreading Omicron sub-variant</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Roche has launched a new PCR test to detect a fast-spreading sub-variant of the Omicron variant of Coronavirus, the Swiss drugmaker said on Thursday. The new test specifically targets the XBB.1.5 Omicron variant and will help researchers closely track the virus’s lineage and provide insights into the epidemiology and impact it has on public health, the company added.</p>
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