Babies cry more in UK, Canada, less in Germany

New cancer drugs show success at a steep price

LONDON, April 3, (RTRS): Babies cry more in Britain, Canada, Italy and Netherlands than in other countries, while newborns in Denmark, Germany and Japan cry and fuss the least, researchers said on Monday.

In research looking at how much babies around the world cry in their first three months, psychologists from Britain have created the first universal charts for normal amounts of crying during that period.

“Babies are already very different in how much they cry in the first weeks of life,” said Dieter Wolker, who led the study at Warwick University.

“We may learn more from looking at cultures where there is less crying — (including) whether this may be due to parenting or other factors relating to pregnancy experiences or genetics.”

The highest levels of colic — defined as crying more than three hours a day for at least three days a week — were found in babies in Britain, Canada and Italy, while the lowest colic rates were found in Denmark and Germany.

On average, the study found, babies cry for around two hours a day in the first two weeks. They then cry a little more in the following few weeks until they peak at around two hours 15 minutes a day at six weeks. This then reduces to an average of one hour 10 minutes by the time they are 12 weeks old.

But there are wide variations, with some babies crying as little as 30 minutes a day, and others more than five hours.

The research, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, was a meta-analysis of studies covering some 8,700 babies in countries including Germany, Denmark, Japan, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain.

Wolker said the new crying chart would help health workers reassure parents whether their baby is crying within a normal range in the first three months, or may need extra support.

Newer cancer drugs that enlist the body’s immune system are improving the odds of survival, but competition between them is not reining in prices that can now top $250,000 a year.

The drugs’ success for patients is the result of big bets in cancer therapy made by BristolMyers Squibb Co, Merck & Co Inc and Roche Holding AG, among others in big pharma. The industry’s pipeline of cancer drugs expanded by 63 percent between 2005 and 2015, according to the QuintilesIMS Institute, and a good number are reaching the market.

The global market for cancer immunotherapies alone is expected to grow more than fourfold globally to $75.8 billion by 2022 from $16.9 billion in 2015, according to research firm GlobalData.

“For cancer drugs in general ... it is hard for us to drive down cost,” said Steve Miller, chief medical officer at Express Scripts Holding Co, the nation’s largest manager of drug benefit plans for employers and insurers. “You don’t want to be in the position of being told to use the second best cancer drug for your child.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as well as President Donald Trump, have been grappling with how to restrain rising prescription drug costs. They have talked about solutions ranging from more price negotiation to faster approval of new drugs, often invoking increased competition between drugmakers.

“Competition is key to lowering drug prices,” Trump told pharmaceutical executives at an Oval Office meeting in January.

But that is not happening with new drugs called checkpoint inhibitors that work by releasing a molecular brake, allowing the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells the same way it fights infections caused by bacteria or viruses.

For cancers like melanoma, the treatments can mean long-term survival for around 20 percent of patients.

Bristol’s Yervoy, first approved in 2011, targets a protein known as CTLA-4. Other immunotherapies, including Bristol’s Opdivo, Keytruda from Merck, Roche’s Tecentriq, and Pfizer Inc’s Bavencio, involve a different protein called PD-1.