Good morning Pharmalittle students. This is Allison DeAngelis, filling in for Ed Silverman while he’s away from the Pharmalot campus. I debated assigning you a “What I did on my summer vacation” essay to write over the weekend. Instead, we’re going to discuss the latest healthcare news! Here are the major headlines of the day.
Just weeks after Novo Nordisk announced that its obesity drug Wegovy cut the risk of heart complications in a major trial, the company now has results from a different study showing the treatment can also benefit people with a common type of heart failure. STAT’s Elaine Chen dug into the data, published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers found that people with both obesity and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, or HFpEF, saw greater improvements while taking Wegovy than in placebo patients and those taking other HFpEF treatments.
Senior officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration detailed the various countermeasures available to combat Covid-19, RSV, and influenza, and discussed the expected timing on the rollouts of these tools, STAT’s Helen Branswell details. When asked whether this fall’s booster would work against the new subvariant, BA.2.86, that has recently been found in a number of countries, one official echoed a statement issued Wednesday by the CDC, saying there hasn’t been time yet to conduct the needed tests. A senior official said they will have more data in the next few weeks.