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An experimental Alzheimer's disease drug from Eisai and Biogen slowed cognitive decline in a closely watched trial but may carry a risk of dangerous side effects for certain patients, according to new data presented on Tuesday (Nov 29). The drug, lecanemab, was associated with a type of brain swelling in 12.6 per cent of trial patients, a side effect previously seen with similar drugs. Fourteen per cent of patients had microhemorrhages in the brain - a symptom linked to two recent deaths of people receiving lecanemab in a follow-on study - and five patients suffered macrohemorrhages. The companies said in...

One of the biggest advantages of Social Security is that its payments get annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs). When inflation is high -- as seniors have seen during the past couple of years -- these COLAs cause monthly checks to rise the following January to help retiree purchasing power keep pace. 2022's COLA boosted benefits by 5.9% this year, and early estimates make it likely that the COLA that will take effect in early 2023 will be between 8% and 9%. What's even better news is that, unlike in 2022, many Social Security recipients are more likely to see the full...

A petition from advocacy groups is calling for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop claiming it does not have relationships with or accept financial support from drug manufacturers and other companies that might benefit from agency research. The CDC has accepted millions of dollars through the CDC Foundation, according to the groups behind the petition. During fiscal years 2014 through 2018, the CDC Foundation received $79.6 million from companies like Pfizer, Biogen, and Merck. Since it was created by Congress in 1995, the nonprofit organization has accepted $161 million from corporations. Public Citizen, Knowledge Ecology International,...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had asked for a federal investigation into its approval of a controversial Alzheimer's drug. Dr Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the FDA, announced she sent a letter to the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services for a probe into communications between FDA staff and Biogen Inc representatives in the lead up to the approval of Aduhelm, the company's Alzheimer's drug. 'Given the ongoing interest and questions, today I requested that [The Office of the Inspector General] conduct an independent review and assessment of interactions between representatives...

Is Biogen's Alzheimer's drug a historic achievement or red herring? There are plenty of opinions on both sides. Nonetheless, it received FDA approval despite an unanimous downvote from its own expert panel. What is going on here? No one knows, but to me, it just doesn't smell right. The subject of an email from Rick Berke, the executive editor of STAT, reads: 'A landmark day in Alzheimer's disease." Berke then linked to an article by Adam Feuerstein and Damian Garde, which, if it's less enthusiastic, it's not by much: "FDA grants historic approval to Alzheimer’s drug designed to slow cognitive...

Government health official on Monday approved Biogen’s aducanumab as the first treatment to attack a likely cause of Alzheimer’s disease, sending its shares soaring, despite controversy over whether the clinical evidence proves the drug works.Biogen said it has priced the drug, to be sold as Aduhelm, at $56,000 per year. Its shares jumped nearly 52 percent to $434.52 when trading resumed following the approval. U.S. traded shares of partner Eisai Co were already up $33.50, or 45 percent, to $107.75Aducanumab aims to remove sticky deposits of a protein called amyloid beta from the brains of patients in earlier stages of...

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday approved what it described as a “first-of-its-kind” treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, which it says “targets the fundamental pathophysiology of the disease.” The approved drug, aducanumab, is what the Washington Post described as the “first drug cleared that is designed to alter the course of the disease by slowing the deterioration of brain function — not just to ease symptoms.”

A Biogen medical conference in late February led to between 205,000 to 300,000 COVID-19 infections from February to November of this year, according to a study in the peer-reviewed journal Science by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.... ...In the four counties that comprise the Boston region, 51,000 - about half - of the cases of COVID-19 until the beginning of November had genetic markers that linked the cases to the conference, according to the report. The virus also spread from the conference to other states at the beginning of...

A former associate director of a US biotechnology company is facing up to seven years in prison in China after allegedly hiding her coronavirus symptoms and flying from Los Angeles to Beijing in hopes of receiving treatment. The Chinese national, 37, gobbled down anti-fever medicine at LAX to suppress her high temperatures before boarding the 13-hour flight back to her homeland with her husband and son, Chinese authorities said. The mother-of-one, named as Jie Li, worked for Biogen, a multinational firm at the center of an outbreak of the coronavirus in Massachusetts. Around 30 per cent of the confirmed cases...

A coronavirus carrier has concealed her symptoms and flown from Los Angeles to Beijing to seek treatment in China. The Chinese woman, who lives in the US with her family, claimed to have been denied the coronavirus test three times by American doctors before resorting to the drastic measure, said officials in Beijing. She gobbled down anti-fever medicine in the airport before boarding the 13-hour flight with her husband and son, authorities claimed.

A former associate director of a US biotechnology company is facing up to seven years in prison in China after allegedly hiding her coronavirus symptoms and flying from Los Angeles to Beijing in hopes of receiving treatment. The Chinese national, 37, gobbled down anti-fever medicine at LAX to suppress her high temperatures before boarding the 13-hour flight back to her homeland with her husband and son, Chinese authorities said. The mother-of-one, named as Jie Li, worked for Biogen, a multinational firm at the center of an outbreak of the coronavirus in Massachusetts. Around 30 per cent of the confirmed cases...

About 175 executives were expected at the Biogen leadership conference on Feb. 26. Employees from Biogen locations around the United States and the world reunited with colleagues they don’t often get to see. Within days, though, the Biogen conference would be infamous, identified as an epicenter of the Massachusetts outbreak of Covid-19, with 70 of 92 coronavirus infections in the state linked to the conference as of Tuesday night, including employees and those who came into contact with them. That doesn’t include a cascade of individual cases in Tennessee, North Carolina, Indiana, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Norway, and suspected...

An employee of the biotech company at the center of the COVID-19 outbreak in Massachusetts is being criminally investigated after she defied the president’s travel ban and went to China. Of the 328 confirmed cases of the disease in Massachusetts, 30 percent of them are linked back to Cambridge-based Biogen after several employees at a conference held by the company at the Marriott Long Wharf tested positive for the virus and traveled across the country, further spreading the disease. Belmont native Jie Li is being accused of knowing she was sick and of taking medication to bring down her fever...

BOSTON — A Tennesssee man on a nonstop, round-trip flight from Boston to Nashville is among three Biogen employees who tested positive for coronavirus, Gov. Charlie Baker said Thursday night. The Tennessee Department of Health earlier announced the case in an official release, saying the man on the flight had tested presumptive positive for COVID-19 in Tennessee. ...

A revolutionary drug that could stop people from ever developing Alzheimer’s disease has been unveiled by scientists. Trials have produced ‘unprecedented’ results and the medicine has been hailed as a potential game-changer in the fight against the cruel disease. In future, healthy pensioners could be prescribed the drug to ward off dementia, in much the same way as statins are given today to those at risk of heart attacks. One British expert described the drug, which is about to be tested in hospitals around the UK, as the best yet, others called it ‘ingenious’ work with ‘tantalising’ results.And a US...

Title speaks for itself. This is a pill, you take 2 each day, 60 pills per month, 55K per year, i.e. about $75 per pill (and we wonder why insurance is going up.) It's ridiculous.

...The therapy in question is Tysabri, and for many MS patients it appears to halt progression of the degenerative neurological disorder. But a year ago... corporate partners Biogen and Elan "voluntarily" withdrew their drug because of FDA pressure and litigation fear after two patients developed a rare brain infection. That infection might have been linked to Tysabri, since the drug works by suppressing parts of the immune system. But these patients also had other immuno-suppressive therapies, and in any case the MS patients were almost all willing to run the risk.... But shortly before the deadline, the FDA announced it...

Drug withdrawal a travesty for MS sufferersMichael Fumento (archive) April 28, 2005 | Print | SendThe yanking from the market of both Vioxx and Bextra, members of a new generation of pain relievers called COX-2 inhibitors, has critics ripping raw flesh off the Food and Drug Administration. Inevitably, both the agency and pharmaceutical companies are under intense pressure to over-scrutinize new drugs. But over-caution can also cause tremendous, as multiple sclerosis sufferers using a recently-pulled drug called Tysabri can attest.Tysabri belongs to an incredibly promising new class of biotech drugs called monoclonal antibodies. Monoclonals have repeatedly shown an ability to...

Tysabri Suspended From The MarketFebruary 28, 2005 Biogen Idec and Elan Corporation have just announced the voluntary suspension of Tysabri from the market and from all clinical trials due to safety concerns. Tysabri was approved for marketing in November 2004. According to the company press release, "This decision is based on very recent reports of two serious adverse events that have occurred in patients treated with TYSABRI in combination with AVONEX® (Interferon beta-1a) in clinical trials. These events involve one fatal, confirmed case and one suspected case of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), a rare and frequently fatal, demyelinating disease of...