CVS Pharmacy and its subsidiaries agreed to pay $315 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit accusing them of dispensing medically unnecessary prescriptions for highly addictive opioids. The case, filed in 2024, alleged the company's staffing levels, performance metrics and incentive pay pushed pharmacists to fill prescriptions without checking whether they were legitimate, with many billed to Medicaid and other federal programmes. CVS denied wrongdoing. The settlement requires extra safeguards on dispensing controlled substances. It is the latest in a series of opioid settlements that have totalled more than $50 billion across the industry over the past decade.
Researchers at Michigan Medicine reversed metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, or MASH, in animal studies using an experimental compound called DT-109. The drug is a glycine-based tripeptide that reduces harmful gut bacteria, protects the intestinal lining and limits inflammatory substances reaching the liver. The work, published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, explains a mechanism the team had previously observed but could not account for. MASH affects about 7% of the world's population and can progress to cirrhosis and liver cancer.
About 11.4 million people developed dementia worldwide in 2023, and new global estimates project 24.7 million new cases a year by 2050, according to research led by UNSW Sydney's Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing and published in JAMA Neurology. Incidence was higher among women, at 10.6 cases per 1,000 person-years against 8.6 for men, and much higher in low- and middle-income countries. Researchers said population ageing means countries cannot simply wait for people to develop dementia and then respond, and called for earlier risk reduction, diagnosis and care.
A study led by Oregon Health & Science University found that people who regularly ate after dinner or around bedtime had a 20% to 30% higher risk of liver disease, including fatty liver disease and cirrhosis. Researchers pooled data from nearly 200,000 participants in three long-running US health studies. The work, published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, is among the first long-term analyses to link meal timing explicitly to fatty liver disease. Earlier research had tied late eating to obesity and heart problems.
CVS Pharmacy and several subsidiaries agreed to pay $315 million to settle a US Justice Department lawsuit accusing the company of filling medically unnecessary prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances. The department announced the deal on Tuesday. The 2024 case alleged CVS filled prescriptions from pill mills and billed federal health care programmes, and said the chain sold more than 12 billion doses of opioids between 2015 and 2020. CVS said it disagrees with the allegations and that the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing. Regulators have increasingly treated pharmacy chains as a last line of defence against illegal prescribing.
Kenyan health authorities are tracing 57 people who had contact with the country's first imported case of Bundibugyo virus disease, a form of Ebola. Ten contacts are in quarantine at the National Police Service Hospital in Nairobi. The patient travelled by land from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Uganda, then flew to Nairobi on Oct. 3, and Kenya confirmed the case on Oct. 6. There is no approved vaccine or specific treatment for this strain. The World Health Organization says contact tracing and quarantine remain the main tools for stopping transmission, and has shipped medical supplies.
The US Department of Health and Human Services has launched a set of actions on how the federal government identifies, documents and investigates health problems reported after vaccination. The plan includes a clinic at the National Institutes of Health for patients who report problems following vaccination, changes to monitoring systems, and reimbursements for doctors who file VAERS reports. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said patients must be taken seriously. Critics including vaccine expert Paul Offit said the effort would produce misleading studies and further shake parents' confidence. The CDC has reported 4,080 measles cases this year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 4,080 confirmed measles cases in the United States as of Oct 8, up 193 in a week and the highest annual count since the country declared measles eliminated in 2000. Cases were reported by 47 jurisdictions, with 42 new outbreaks this year and 96% of infections linked to outbreaks. About 95% of patients were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status, roughly one in ten was hospitalised, and officials in Pennsylvania have confirmed five measles-associated deaths. Public health experts expect the US to lose its elimination status. In 2025, the full-year total was 2,289 cases.
New research suggests that losing beneficial gut bacteria during inflammation may open the door to new food sensitivities in people with inflammatory bowel disease. IBD, which includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, involves chronic inflammation of the digestive tract, and many patients report that certain foods make symptoms worse. The gut hosts trillions of bacteria that help break down fibre, train the immune system and keep the intestinal lining intact. When inflammation flares, the mix of species shifts, helpful strains decline and the immune system may start reacting to proteins it previously ignored. The authors say more studies are needed before the finding changes clinical advice.
A study published in Nature Medicine analysed self-reported pain from 6,125,459 people in 118 countries. Women reported more pain than men at all 11 body sites examined. The largest differences were facial pain, 83 percent higher, headache, 74 percent higher, and stomach or abdominal pain, 60 percent higher. Back pain was the most common complaint at 40 percent, while facial pain was the least common at 2 percent. Pain at most sites rose fastest before age 55. Overall any-body pain climbed from about 30 percent at age five to 70 percent at age 100 or older.