Paying for polio shots
Billionaire Bill Gates has said he will help pay for injectable polio vaccines in India, one of the last countries where the disease persists. The current oral treatment has not been successful due to the prevalence of chronic diarrhoea, which prevents the vaccine from working.
Obesity drug heartbreak
Many people who took the anti-obesity drug fenfluramine before it was banned in 1997 carried on developing damage to their heart valves long after stopping the medication, a study of 5743 former users reveals (BMC Medicine, DOI: 10.1186/1741-7015-6-34). Of these, 20 per cent of women and 12…
