Health News Roundup: Experimental Lilly pill, Mounjaro both lead to 15% weight loss in clinical trials; US FDA approves Pfizer's hair loss drug and more

The detailed results from a mid-stage trial, presented at a meeting of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in San Diego on Friday, showed a higher efficacy than the 14.9% weight reduction reported by the companies last month in a brief preview of the data. US activists rally one year after Supreme Court allowed abortion bans Abortion rights supporters and opponents held dueling rallies around the U.S. on Saturday, the first anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v.

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

Experimental Lilly pill, Mounjaro both lead to 15% weight loss in clinical trials

In a mid-stage trial, the highest dose of Eli Lilly's experimental pill orforglipron led to 14.7% weight loss after 36 weeks for people who were obese or overweight, setting a marker in the race to develop effective oral obesity drugs, researchers said on Friday. Results from a different trial, also presented in San Diego at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association, showed that Lilly's injected drug Mounjaro helped people with type 2 diabetes who were also obese or overweight lose an average of 15% of their body weight, or 33 pounds (14.8 kg).

US FDA approves Pfizer's hair loss drug

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Pfizer Inc's drug to treat hair loss caused by an autoimmune disease, the company said on Friday. The drug, branded as Litfulo, has been approved for people aged 12 years and older suffering from severe alopecia areata (AA), a condition where the immune system attacks hair follicles and causes hair to fall out, often in clumps.

Arizona governor issues order to protect abortion rights

Democratic Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs on Friday issued an order to protect abortion rights, wielding her executive power to curtail the effects of a restrictive abortion law signed by her Republican predecessor. Hobbs said on Twitter she ordered all abortion-related prosecutions centralized under the office of Attorney General Kristin Mays, also a Democrat and abortion rights advocate, stripping that authority from county prosecutors, many of them Republicans.

Biden to sign executive order expanding access to contraception

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday will sign an executive order designed to protect and expand access to contraception, after a Supreme Court ruling last year overturning the constitutional right to abortion raised fears that birth control could also face restrictions. Biden senior adviser Jen Klein told reporters that the order will increase ways for women to access contraception and lower out-of-pocket costs.

Zealand, Boehringer tout higher weight-loss drug efficacy in update

Zealand Pharma and Boehringer Ingelheim said their experimental obesity treatment was shown to reduce body weight by close to 19% in a mid-stage trial when looking at participants who had reached the intended dosage level. The detailed results from a mid-stage trial, presented at a meeting of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in San Diego on Friday, showed a higher efficacy than the 14.9% weight reduction reported by the companies last month in a brief preview of the data.

US activists rally one year after Supreme Court allowed abortion bans

Abortion rights supporters and opponents held dueling rallies around the U.S. on Saturday, the first anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized the procedure nationwide. In Washington, speakers from national abortion rights groups, including Women's March and NARAL Pro-Choice America, assembled in Columbus Circle to celebrate the defeat of some abortion opponents in the 2022 midterm races and to rally voters ahead of next year's congressional and presidential elections.

Factbox-U.S. state abortion legislation to watch in 2023

State legislatures are wrestling with how much to restrict or expand abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. Here is a snapshot of pending and passed legislation seeking to restrict or protect access in 2023.

Pfizer/BioNTech initiate application with EU regulator for updated COVID vaccine

Pfizer and partner BioNTech said on Friday they have initiated an application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for authorization of updated COVID-19 vaccine targeting Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5. Earlier in June, Europe's medicine regulators backed the World Health Organization's recommendation to update the antigen composition of COVID shots to target one of the currently dominant XBB variants ahead of the upcoming autumn vaccination campaign.

GSK soothes investors by settling first Zantac cancer lawsuit due for US trial

GSK agreed to settle a U.S. lawsuit alleging its discontinued heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer, the British drugmaker said on Friday, preventing the first such case from going to trial next month. The company said it had reached a confidential deal with California resident James Goetz who alleged he developed bladder cancer from taking the drug. The trial was due to start on July 24, and would have been the first test of how Zantac cancer claims would fare before a jury.

No direct evidence COVID started in Wuhan lab - US intelligence report

U.S. intelligence agencies found no direct evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic stemmed from an incident at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, a report declassified on Friday said. The four-page report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said the U.S. intelligence community still could not rule out the possibility that the virus came from a laboratory, however, and had not been able to discover the origins of the pandemic.