The Food and Drug Administration issued draft guidance Friday for how to test the toxicity of nicotine products that are meant to help smokers quit traditional "combustible" smoking, like e-cigarettes.
Why it matters: Manufacturers are able to designate e-cigarettes as either a tobacco product or a smoking cessation novel drug to the FDA — but none of them are in the drug category. This draft guidance is part of the agency's effort to help companies start applying as a therapeutic over-the-counter drug.
The World Health Organization is responding to another outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, just a week after a previous outbreak was officially declared over.
Why it matters: The new outbreak poses a "high" local and regional threat, the WHO stated Friday, and doctors are facing a challenging setting for responding to this illness due to armed conflict in the area.
Younger doctors aren't necessarily opposed to single-payer health care, and some fully support it. That could change the way doctors flex their muscle on one of the most contentious issues in American politics, Kaiser Health News and Vice report from an American Medical Association conference.
Why it matters: The AMA has long fought government intervention in health care. It opposed the creation of Medicare, as well as the Affordable Care Act, and has formally opposed single-payer for years. But a group of young doctors recently pressured the organization into at least studying the issue again.
With more than a week to go in the second-quarter earnings season, the health care industry has already banked more profits than any other quarter in the past year.
The bottom line: Company after company has posted profits that have exceeded Wall Street estimates, and most firms have raised profit estimates for the rest of 2018.
Prescription drugs could make up close to 15% of total health care spending, rather than 10% that's often attributed to them, according to a new report published in Health Affairs.
Why it matters: Other estimates focused on pharmaceutical companies, but the new report takes into account drugs administered by doctors and the profits of third parties like pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers. Those middlemen are under intense scrutiny from the Trump administration, but still make up a much smaller share of drug revenues than drugmakers themselves.
