Sauce for the TB gander

Tuberculosis is particularly good at evolving resistance to antibiotics, tweaking the receptor that those antibiotics (typically rifamycin) target. But now researchers have found a group of bacteria that produce similar antibiotics … but that are just different enough to beat TB at its own game.

Great news for AbbVie!

Thanks to the new tax law, the company has been able to cut its tax bill by 96 percent.
Here’s hoping to see some of those savings translate to more research and potentially lower drug prices in the future.

Great news for 200 people a year!

Researchers have found a potential antidote to botulism.

Potential Epi-Pen problem

Adding to Mylan and Pfizer’s ongoing Epi-Pen woes, now there’s a problem with the labels. The labels of some injectors may have been placed incorrectly, causing the injector to get stuck to the package.

“In some cases,” said the FDA, “the patient or caregiver may not be able to quickly remove the epinephrine auto-injector from the carrier tube.”

Use it or lose it, please

A new report finds that a lot of parents — we’re talking almost half — save unused antibiotics to give to their kids ‘next time,’ or to give to other people.

The issue isn’t “you should finish the entire course” (which is not necessarily true), but that the drugs are being given to others without dosage considerations or medical supervision.

Opioid deaths hit new high

In 2017, 49,060 Americans died from opioid-related drug overdoses — that’s up more than 16 percent over 2016 … and the news comes just a week after HHS Secretary Alex Azar claimed overdose deaths were beginning to level off. Awkward.

FDA approves new opioid, but with controversy

In the midst of the opioid crisis, the FDA just approved a new, more powerful opioid called Dsuvia (based on sufentanil, which has been around for a while) made by AcelRx in California. Why? Military use.

One factor that weighed heavily in the Dsuvia decision is military interest in the drug, [FDA commish Scott] Gottlieb said in his statement. The military wants to explore whether the pill can be used as a battlefield painkiller that is less cumbersome than liquid analgesics. The Pentagon has spent millions of dollars helping to fund AcelRx’s research, public documents show.

Dsuvia won’t be available in retail pharmacies — only in ERs and in battlefield testing in a single-dose form.