The Consumer Health Division of Bayer has launched a business unit focused on developing new Precision Health products across its range of everyday health categories. Bayer will prioritize developing products that enable people to take greater control of their own personal health through digital solutions that facilitate more informed choices based on personal insights and novel delivery mechanisms.

Since it was identified in 1984 as the cause of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has infected more than 80 million people and been responsible for some 40 million deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Currently, the WHO reports more than 38 million people globally live with the retrovirus, and each year, another 1 million new cases are diagnosed.

Why do some people develop Alzheimer's disease while others don't? And, even more puzzlingly, why do many individuals whose brains are chock-full of toxic amyloid aggregates - a telltale sign of Alzheimer's brain pathology - never go on to develop Alzheimer's-associated dementias?

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers appear to have found the answer.

Initial findings from a study of nearly 10,000 Americans, many of whom had COVID-19, have uncovered new details about long COVID, the post-infection set of conditions that can affect nearly every tissue and organ in the body. Clinical symptoms can vary and include fatigue, brain fog, and dizziness, and last for months or years after a person has COVID-19. The research team, funded by the National Institutes of Health, also found that long COVID was more common and severe in study participants infected before the 2021 Omicron variant.

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved PAXLOVID™ (nirmatrelvir tablets and ritonavir tablets) for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in adults who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19, including hospitalization or death. PAXLOVID has been available in the U.S. since December 2021 under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), and the overall benefit/risk profile and indication for use in eligible adults remain consistent with the EUA.

Taking a daily multivitamin supplement can slow age-related memory decline, finds a large study led by researchers at Columbia University and Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard.

"Cognitive aging is a top health concern for older adults, and this study suggests that there may be a simple, inexpensive way to help older adults slow down memory decline,"

Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center studied the structure and function of a transporter involved in cancer and immunity. They captured six structures of the transporter, including when it was bound to an inhibitor, providing unprecedented insight into how it works. The findings, published in Cell, have implications for drug development.

Insilico Medicine (Insilico), a clinical-stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, announced that the company has nominated a potentially best-in-class preclinical candidate targeting ENPP1 for cancer immunotherapy and the potential treatment of Hypophosphatasia (HPP).

ENPP1 is an ecto-nucleotide pyrophosphatase that plays an important role in purinergic signaling that regulates immune, cardiovascular, neurological, and hematological system functions.

Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted that the available data support the efficacy and safety of its unadjuvanted bivalent respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) prefusion F vaccine candidate RSVpreF or PF-06928316.

A team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine is coming closer to delivering on the promise of personalized breast cancer therapy with a strategy to predict the most likely response of a cancer to a specific less toxic treatment regimen.

In this study published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, the scientists developed and validated in clinical trials a multiparameter molecular classifier test to predict with a high degree of confidence which patients with HER2-positive (HER2+) breast cancer would be candidates for anti-HER2 therapy alone without the need for chemotherapy.

Pfizer and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE: TMO) announced they have entered into a collaboration agreement to help increase local access to next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based testing for lung and breast cancer patients in more than 30 countries across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia where advanced genomic testing has previously been limited or unavailable.

Researchers at UCLA Health and Harvard have identified 10 pesticides that significantly damaged neurons implicated in the development of Parkinson’s disease, providing new clues about environmental toxins' role in the disease.

While environmental factors such as pesticide exposure have long been linked to Parkinson's, it has been harder to pinpoint which pesticides may raise risk for the neurodegenerative disorder.

Bayer today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track Designation for its investigational drug asundexian (BAY2433334) as a potential treatment to prevent stroke and systemic embolism in people with atrial fibrillation (AF). This news follows asundexian's first U.S. FDA Fast Track Designation for the prevention of stroke in patients after a non-cardioembolic ischemic stroke, which was granted in 2022.

Irregularities in the body's genetic coding to make proteins are linked to cancerous tumors. But most genetic material contains elements whose function isn’t clear.

Could abnormalities in non-coding material also impact a person’s health, or even be linked to cancers as well?

Experts from Newcastle University found the nervous system of people with post-COVID fatigue was underactive in three key areas. Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms of long COVID.

The breakthrough could lead to better treatment and tests to identify the condition and the team are already progressing the work having just started a trial.

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is announcing the supplemental approval of Rexulti (brexpiprazole) oral tablets for the treatment of agitation associated with dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease. This is the first FDA-approved treatment option for this indication.

Bayer AG announced the inauguration of its new life science incubator dubbed "Co.Lab Cambridge" located in Kendall Square in Cambridge, U.S.. Bayer's Co.Lab Cambridge is specifically designed to support cutting-edge cell and gene therapies (CGT) entrepreneurs with access to Bayer's enterprise wide expertise in addition to state-of-the art laboratory and office space.

Vitamin D intake could reduce cancer mortality in the population by twelve percent - provided the vitamin is taken daily. This was the result of an evaluation of 14 studies of the highest quality conducted at the German Cancer Research Center with a total of almost 105,000 participants.

Vitamin D deficiency is widespread worldwide and is particularly common among cancer patients.

Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) announced the launch of the Institute of Human Biology (IHB) focussing on advancing research in the field of human model systems such as organoids. Leveraging human model systems, the institute aims to accelerate drug discovery and development by improving the understanding of how organs function and how diseases develop.

Strategies to treat pain without triggering dangerous side effects such as euphoria and addiction have proven elusive. For decades, scientists have attempted to develop drugs that selectively activate one type of opioid receptor to treat pain while not activating another type of opioid receptor linked to addiction. Unfortunately, those compounds can cause a different unwanted effect: hallucinations.