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Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is recalling 12 lots of its popular anti-smoking drug Chantix after the company discovered the products contain high levels of a chemical that may cause cancer.The voluntary move expands on a recall that covered nine lots of Chantix, which goes by the generic name varenicline, and was issued to warehouses earlier this month.Pfizer said it found N-nitroso-varenicline, which is a type of organic compound called a nitrosamine, in the product at levels higher than the company’s so-called acceptable intake limit.Nitrosamines can develop naturally in a broad range of items, including meats, cheeses and cosmetics. The FDA has...

Before her dreams of competing at the Tokyo Olympics went up in smoke last week, Sha’Carri Richardson stood on the precipice of a life-changing payday. America’s fastest woman had begun to draw attention from deep-pocketed corporate sponsors intrigued by her blend of speed, style and showmanship. At 21, Richardson blew away the competition in the women’s 100 meters at U.S. Olympic Trials, solidifying herself as a contender to win gold in her sport’s glamour race. She also ran with lash extensions, flowing fire-orange hair and impossibly long acrylic fingernails, evoking memories of America’s most celebrated sprinter from a bygone era,...

President Biden on Friday will direct the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to work with states on importing prescription drugs from Canada, and direct officials to develop a “comprehensive plan” to lower drug prices in 45 days. The moves are part of the health care section of a wide-ranging executive order on promoting competition in the economy that Biden is poised to sign on Friday afternoon. Allowing imports of cheaper drugs from other countries was part of Biden’s health care plan during the campaign, but Friday’s move is a step forward to take action on that front.

Israel’s “precision medicine” for COVID-19, which tackles the immune overreaction that causes deterioration from the disease, will start a second round of clinical trials in Greece next week. The testing comes with interest in coronavirus drugs sky-high, amid spiraling cases in several countries where widespread vaccine protection isn’t expected anytime soon, including India, where there are more than 300,000 new cases per day, and Nepal, where hospitals are struggling. The inhaled drug EXO-CD24 was given to 30 patients in moderate condition or worse, and all of them recovered, 29 of them within three to five days. In February Tel Aviv’s...

Fear has invaded the Mexican border city of Reynosa after gunmen in vehicles killed 14 people, including taxis drivers, workers and a nursing student, and security forces responded with operations that left four suspects dead. While this city across the border from McAllen, Texas is used to cartel violence as a key trafficking point, the 14 victims in Saturday’s attacks appeared to be what Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca called “innocent citizens” rather than members of one gang killed by a rival... The attacks took place in several neighborhoods in eastern Reynosa, according to the Tamaulipas state agency...

A new class of drugs that inhibits a “master switch” involved in the vast majority of cases of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), a fatal subtype of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, has been discovered by researchers at Mount Sinai. In a study in Clinical Cancer Research published in June, the team reported that the drugs, known as small-molecule inhibitors of the SOX 11 oncogene, are toxic to MCL tumor development in human cells studied outside the body. If the effect is replicated in living patients, the discovery could lead to new therapies for a disease that is highly resistant to existing treatments. “The...

Texas officials said Thursday they're worried about dramatic spikes in drug overdose deaths in some areas of the state as illegal border crossings and drug trafficking have picked up since President Joe Biden took office. Gov. Greg Abbott joined Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Steve McCraw and Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn on Thursday in Fort Worthto provide an update on the border crisis. “We’re heading for a 50 percent increase in overdose deaths in Tarrant County alone,” Waybourn warned, noting that the amount of drugs flooding into Tarrant County has skyrocketed even with DPS intervention. Since January,...

Surprisingly, the virus affects only the countries that may have a capacity to control China’s hegemonist ambitions and not those securing aid and assistance from it. It is widely suspected that the COVID-19 virus was manufactured in a laboratory in China and was let loose on the world. It is China which is thus claimed to be largely responsible for the loss of more than 3.3 million lives and causing untold suffering to a far greater number of people. If we look at the list of death by countries, we will see that over half a million died in USA,...

A University of Alberta virology lab has uncovered how an oral antiviral drug works to attack the SARS-CoV-2 virus, in findings published May 10 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The researchers demonstrated the underlying mechanism of action by which the antiviral drug molnupiravir changes the viral genome, a process known as excessive mutagenesis or "error catastrophe.""The polymerase, or replication engine of the virus, mistakes molnupiravir molecules for the natural building blocks required for viral genome replication and mixes them in," explained Matthias Götte, professor and chair of the Department of Medical Microbiology & Immunology in the Faculty of Medicine...

MDMA may mostly be known as an illicit party drug, but this psychoactive chemical looks to offer therapeutic applications far removed from the highs of the rave scene. In fact, MDMA-assisted therapy could soon become a legal and approved way to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the United States. In the first phase III clinical trial for any psychedelic-assisted therapy, MDMA has shown more potential to help treat PTSD with therapy than possibly any other medicine we've got. After just three sessions, patients who were given MDMA during therapy were 35 percent less likely to meet the diagnosis for...

the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is worsening. A dozen Texas counties, many of them not directly situated on the border, have declared emergencies due to the explosive increase in human trafficking that the open border is facilitating. ... the open border is facilitating an additional outbreak of lawlessness. The opioid fentanyl is now flooding across the border. ... The open border has created a massive economic boom for the cartels, which were already far better funded than Mexico’s police and military combined. Fentanyl is one of the primary drugs flooding across the border. The majority of fentanyl and its...

In the eternal arms race between bacteria and antibiotics, deadly superbugs with resistance to humanity's most vital life-saving medicines continue to emerge and evolve. It's a growing crisis, but thankfully we are not entirely powerless against the scourge of antibiotic resistance. In medical scenarios where frontline treatments fail to help patients, doctors can turn to so-called drugs of last resort – treatments set aside until the eleventh hour has come, after prioritized therapies haven't worked out. Drugs of last resort may be held back for a number of reasons, including side effects, cost factors, patient considerations, and more. In the...

The black man shot dead during a police raid on his North Carolina home was a known drug dealer — with a 30-year rap sheet stretching more than 180 pages, according to records. Andrew Brown Jr. — who was shot dead last Wednesday in a car outside his Elizabeth City home — had the lengthy rap sheet dating back to May 1988, according to a search warrant and other records obtained by Fox News.

A popular Charlotte-area teacher was killed in shootout with a Mexican drug cartel last week in Alamance County, North Carolina, the sheriff's office said during a news conference Wednesday. Barney Harris, a basketball coach at Union Academy in Monroe, was well-loved and respected, but Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson said, on the side, Harris was involved in the "dangerous and deadly" drug world. "I can tell you right now, when we are dealing with the Mexican drug cartel, someone is going to die as a result of this," Johnson said. Police said Harris and his brother-in-law Steven Alexander Stewart, of...

CHAPEL HILL – An experimental drug created at a subsidiary of Emory University has shown potential to both prevent and treat COVID-19, according to researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill. The drug, known as EIDD-2801, is being developed by Miami-based Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. Ridgeback is partnered with drug giant Merck in the development process. The drug was invented at Drug Innovations at Emory, a not-for-profit biotechnology company wholly owned by Emory University, according to Ridgeback.

Hospital emergency rooms in the United States saw an increase in patients requiring treatment for drug overdoses and suicide attempts in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic raged, according to an analysis published Wednesday by JAMA Psychiatry... ERs treated 14% more drug overdose patients on a weekly basis last year and treated 6% more patients after a suicide attempt compared to prior years, the data showed. The findings highlight the need to account for the mental health effects on the pandemic as part of the overall public health response, the researchers, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote...

The driver of a box truck that struck and killed five bicyclists on a stretch of Nevada highway last week, and told investigators he fell asleep at the wheel, had a high level of methamphetamine in his system, prosecutors said Wednesday. Jordan Alexander Barson, 45, of Kingman, Arizona, faces 12 felony charges, including driving under the influence and reckless driving, in a criminal complaint filed in Las Vegas. "Choices have consequences," Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said after a Las Vegas judge issued a warrant for Barson's arrest in the Dec. 10 crash on U.S. 95 between Boulder City...

Question. All federal monies projects require intermittent drug testing and Marijuana is not permitted. Schools and Healthcare institutions all swim in federal dollars and are not intermittently drug tested. Why??

A man who was recently added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list for a cartel execution in Texas is linked to murders in the border state of Nuevo Leon, where his organization has established almost total control over one of Mexico’s wealthiest communities. In recent weeks, gunmen believed to be working under orders of Jose Rodolfo “El Gato” Villarreal carried out murders in the ritzy suburb of San Pedro within the greater Monterrey metro... Last week the FBI added El Gato to the list of Most Wanted fugitives for the 2013 murder of a cartel attorney in Southlake, Texas, near...

The U-Haul truck captured on video distributing riot gear for Louisville protesters following a grand jury decision in the Breonna Taylor case was reportedly tied to the Louisville Bail Initiative, a left-wing activist group stacked with George Soros Justice Fellows. Almost immediately after the grand-jury announcement, protesters swarmed a U-Haul truck in a parking lot and took out riot gear, weapons, gas masks, and anti-police signs to use during clashes with police. ... Multiple journalists outed Holly Zoller, a board member of a Louisville Bail Project, as the person who allegedly rented the U-Haul and supplied the riot gear to...