Europe’s medicine watchdog okays preventive AIDS pill

China launches nationwide inspection of vaccines

PARIS, July 24, (Agencies): Europe’s medicines watchdog said Friday it has recommended the licencing of the first-ever AIDS prevention pill for the European Union.

Dubbed Truvada, the pill combines two drugs and is already used in Europe and elsewhere in the world as part of AIDS treatment, and is approved in the United States, Kenya and South Africa as a preventive “pre-exposure prophylaxis” or PrEP.

Now the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has also “recommended granting a marketing authorisation in the European Union for Truvada... for pre-exposure prophylaxis.”

The medicine must be used “in combination with safer sex practices to reduce the risk” of picking up HIV, it added.

PrEP is a way for people at high risk of infection — including men who have sex with men, and heterosexual couples of whom one partner has the virus — to lower their chances of getting HIV.

Two recent studies had found “substantial reductions” in infection risk with Truvada, an EMA statement said.

In one study, risk was lowered by 42 percent in homosexual men, and another by 75 percent in heterosexual couples with one HIV-positive partner. The recommendation of the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP), will be forwarded to the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, for approval.

Each member state will then take a decision on price, and whether or not it will be covered by national health systems, said the EMA.

EU member France already announced last November it would make the drug available as PrEP for free, under a temporary national authorisation.

Truvada is manufactured by US pharmaceutical group Gilead.

With no vaccine or cure for AIDS, the focus remains on prevention.

Yet, a study released this week said about 2.5 million people a year are still becoming infected with the AIDS-causing virus.

SHANGHAI:

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China health authorities have started a nationwide inspection of vaccinations four months after a scandal broke involving nearly $90 million worth of illegal vaccines that were suspected of being sold in dozens of provinces.

Authorities will track purchases as well as the distribution of vaccines and vaccination records, to ensure they are legally traded and properly handled and used, the National Health and Family Planning Commission said in a statement published online.

Random checks will be conducted at 20 percent of hospitals and clinics providing vaccinations, while all disease control and prevention agencies nationwide will be inspected, it said.

In March, authorities pledged to crack down on the black market sale of vaccines after a mother and daughter in Shandong Province were found to have illegally bought vaccines from traders and sold on to hundreds of re-sellers around China.

The vaccines, which police said were made by licensed producers, were not kept and transported in the required cold conditions, which could mean that patients taking them could suffer severe side effects or even death.

Hong Kong limited the number of nonresident children getting vaccinations at government clinics there after the scare raised fears that mainland families would go to the city for inoculations and put pressure on supplies.

AIDS activists protest during the closing ceremony of the 21st International

AIDS Conference at the International Convention Centre in Durban. (AFP) LONDON:

The lead surgeon in the UK’s first double hand transplant says he believes the patient will regain good movement and feeling in his hands.

Dr Simon Kay said Friday that patient Chris King is “doing very well” after the complex 12-hour operation performed in the last 10 days.

King says he already has some movement in his hands. The 57-year-old had lost both his hands except for his thumbs in an industrial accident three years ago. He is the second person to receive a hand transplant at a specialist unit at the Leeds General Infirmary and the first to have both hands replaced.

The donor of the hands has not been identified but his family released a statement sending their best wishes to King.

BENGALURU:

AstraZeneca Plc said its experimental lung cancer drug Tagrisso met its main goal in a late-stage study.

The tablet, which has won early approval from both US and European regulators, is one of several cancer medicines AstraZeneca hopes will rebuild its sales following patent losses on older drugs.

AstraZeneca said Tagrisso showed superior progression-free survival compared to standard platinum-based chemotherapy.

The trial assessed Tagrisso’s efficacy and safety as a second-line treatment for certain kinds of lung cancer, the drugmaker said.

Second-line therapies are used when initial, or first-line, treatments do not produce adequate results.

AstraZeneca said a full evaluation of the data is ongoing.