According to the CDC, approximately six million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease, but access to experimental, potentially life-saving drugs is limited. For impacted veterans, the Veterans Health Administration is looking for ways to provide that access.
Last year, Biogen, in partnership with Japanese drug company Eisai, announced that the drug called Leqembi showed promise in slowing cognitive decline in Alzaheimer's patients by 27 percent. The VHA announced it will shell out more than $26,000 annually for each veteran on Leqembi. If the FDA grants a full approval by July 6, Medicare and Medicaid services said it would immediately provide broad coverage of the drug to customers.
The experimental treatment received Accelerated Approval by the Food and Drug administration earlier this year. The specific pathway to approval had been introduced by the agency to provide speedier clearance on drugs that treat serious conditions.
Last month the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services declined to provide unrestricted coverage of the drug because "there is not yet evidence meeting the criteria for reconsideration."
"This standard differs from the criteria used by the FDA to assess whether medications are safe and effective. We are aware that additional publications may be forthcoming that include information relevant to the questions included in the current NCD," the agency added in its statement.
The World Health Organization's cancer agency has deemed the sweetener aspartame — found in diet soda and countless other foods — as a “possible” cause of cancer, while a separate expert group looking at the same evidence said it still considers the sugar substitute safe in limited quantities.
More than a third of Americans were under extreme heat advisories, watches and warnings Thursday as a blistering heat wave that's been baking the nation spread further into California, forcing residents to seek out air conditioning or find other ways to stay cool in triple-digit temperatures.
Tourists in central Athens huddled under mist machines, and zoo animals in Madrid were fed fruit popsicles and chunks of frozen food, as southern Europeans braced for a heat wave Thursday, with a warning of severe conditions coming from the European Union’s space agency.
A new study published in Nature has found that more than 56 percent of the world's oceans have changed color in the past 20 years, and climate change is to blame.
Recently discovered teeth of a two-million-year-old human relative in Africa could give researchers new insight into genetics.
U.S. officials have approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill, which will let American women and girls buy contraceptive medication from the same aisle as aspirin and eyedrops.
The Webb Space Telescope is marking one year of cosmic photographs with one of its best yet: the dramatic close-up of dozens of stars at the moment of birth.
