Health, Fda | featured news

Perhaps, like me, you’ve wondered what percentage of retail meat has foodborne pathogens, and of those, which pathogens are antibiotic resistant. Well, you’re in luck. The Food and Drug Administration’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System puts out a yearly report looking at the rates of antibiotic resistance of foodborne pathogens in retail meat and poultry samples. A thorough examination, the Retail Meat Report is hefty chunk of research to wade through. Because of this, it’s not easy to make conclusions on the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in the meat case just by reading through the report’s 80-plus pages.

The U.S. health regulator approved the first implantable device for treating a rare, genetic, eye disease that can lead to blindness.

A stroke-preventing pill from Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb won approval from U.S. health regulators, setting the stage for a fierce fight among drug makers to replace the widely used bloodthinner warfarin.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration took 684 days to issue a warning letter after uncovering serious issues at the pharmacy at the center of the deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak, newly released documents showed.

Pharmacy compounding has come under a spotlight in recent months, after a center produced pain medicine contaminated with fungus that caused a national meningitis outbreak.

Consumer Reports is calling on the Food and Drug Administration to set standards for how much arsenic can be allowed in rice after finding the potential toxin in almost every rice product it tested. FDA is running its own tests and says it would be premature to set standards or to urge consumers to change their eating habits. Rice producers say there's no documented evidence of health harm from arsenic in rice grown in the United States.

Researchers announced Tuesday the beginning of a FDA-approved clinical trial that uses umbilical cord blood stem cells to ‘cure’ autism. Dr. Michael Chez, director of pediatric neurology at Sutter Neuroscience Institute in Sacramento, Calif., said he and his colleagues have been processing the trial for more than a year now, and they have high hopes it will succeed.

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved a new weight loss drug from Vivus Inc. that many doctors consider the most effective therapy in a new generation of anti-obesity pills designed to help patients safely shed pounds.

U.S. health officials are asking safety questions about the first artificial heart valve designed to be implanted without major surgery.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that it would not ban the use of bisphenol A, also known as BPA, in food packaging but said it would continue research on the health effects of the widely used chemical.