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More patients may be able to safely shower after surgery

By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) – Many patients may be able to shower just two days after their operations without increasing their risk of infections around the incision site, a recent study suggests. The findings, along with results from other recent research, should help convince more doctors to let patients shower after surgery, said Dr. Paul Dayton, a researcher at Des Moines University and UnityPoint Health in Iowa who wasn’t involved in the study. “Traditions are sometimes long to fade away due to lack of good evidence to support change – this paper will certainly help to drive change,” Dayton said by email.

Partners may not spot penis repair for common birth defect

By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) – Men don’t need to live in fear of ridicule over the appearance of their penis after getting surgery to correct a birth defect that causes urine to come out in the wrong place, a Swiss study suggests. Researchers focused on a condition known as hypospadias, a birth defect that affects around 1 in 200 boys and causes the urethra to form abnormally with an opening for urine anywhere from just below the end of the penis to the scrotum. Men with corrected hypospadias – a surgery typically done between ages 3 months and 18 months – often suffer from sexual inhibition and fear of being ridiculed for their penile appearance, researchers note in the Journal of Pediatric Urology.

South Korea announces official end to MERS outbreak

South Korea announced on Wednesday the official end to a deadly outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) that killed 36 people and sparked widespread panic in Asia's fourth-largest economy. World Health Organization standards call for a four-week waiting period after the last MERS patient fully recovers before an outbreak can definitively be said to be over. The virus infected 186 people, with nearly 17,000 people confined to their homes and thousands of schools temporarily closing at the peak of the largest MERS outbreak outside Saudi Arabia, where it first appeared in 2012.

HealthCare.gov signs up 6 million for Jan. 1 insurance

About 6 million people have signed up for health insurance on the website HealthCare.gov, including 2.4 million new customers, for coverage effective Jan. 1, 2016, the U.S. government said on Friday. HealthCare.gov sells subsidized insurance plans created as part of President Barack Obama’s national healthcare reform, often called Obamacare. Last year at this time, about 3.4 million people had signed up for these plans, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

UK cost agency endorses Novartis heart drug for some patients

Novartis's big new drug hope Entresto has been recommended for use in some patients with heart failure by Britain's cost agency NICE, which said on Friday it believed the treatment was a cost-effective option. Entresto has a list price of 1,194 pounds ($1,809) a year in Britain, or less than half the price of $4,560 charged by Novartis in the United States. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said Entresto was suitable for a subset of heart failure patients whose hearts were particularly poor at pumping blood.

Sierra Leone celebrates end of Ebola epidemic

By Umara Fofana FREETOWN (Reuters) – Residents of Sierra Leone's capital held a candlelit vigil and celebrations to mark the end of an Ebola epidemic that has killed almost 4,000 people including more than 220 health workers since it began last year. Following 42 days with no new cases, the West African nation's epidemic was declared over on Saturday at a ceremony attended by President Ernest Bai Koroma and U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) representative Anders Nordstrom. Thousands of people gathered overnight around the Cotton Tree, a massive tree in the centre of Freetown, for a candlelit vigil organised by women's groups to pay tribute to health workers who lost their lives.

There’s little evidence to help avoid stress fractures

By Roxanne Nelson (Reuters Health) – Although there are plenty of opinions about what causes tiny, painful stress fractures in the bones of regular runners, a new review of existing research finds solid evidence for only two risk factors. Having had a stress fracture in the past raised the risk of having them again by five-fold and being female more than doubled it, researchers reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

CVS: ‘all bets are off’ for new cholesterol drug contracts

CVS Health Corp, the No 2 manager of drug benefit plans for U.S. employers and insurers, will wait until a second new cholesterol-lowering drug is approved by regulators before negotiating for price discounts or adding either of the much pricer new drugs to its list of covered medications. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in July approved Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc and Sanofi SA’s Praluent, which works by blocking a protein called PCSK9 that helps “bad” LDL cholesterol stay in the bloodstream. An FDA decision on a second PCSK9 inhibitor, Amgen Inc’s Repatha, is expected later this month.

Outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease Sickens 31 in NYC

An outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease has infected at least 31 in New York City and health officials are racing to figure out the cause. The deaths of two patients who also had Legionnaire's disease are being investigated by health officials. Officials from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene are combing the center of the outbreak in the South Bronx to search for the source of the dangerous outbreak.

FDA approves Otsuka and Lundbeck’s schizophrenia treatment

(Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Danish drugmaker H. Lundbeck A/S and Japan’s Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co Ltd’s Rexulti, an anti-psychotic drug used to treat schizophrenia. The drug, brexpiprazole, was also approved as an adjunctive therapy for major depressive disorder (MDD), a serious psychiatric condition that can lead to persistent feelings of sadness, frustration or anger, the health regulator said on Friday. Otsuka Pharmaceutical is a unit of Otsuka Holdings Co Ltd. The agency based its decision on seven clinical trials, three of which examined the drug’s effect on schizophrenia and four testing it as an adjunctive therapy for MDD.