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People With Eating Disorders Are Misusing Ozempic
No matter how generally beneficial or safe a drug is, it can be misused. A study out today, for instance, shows that people with eating disorders are taking GLP-1 medications like semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy) in ways they shouldn’t be.
Researchers at the University of Louisville and others looked at a large sample of people with eating disorders. Roughly a third reported having used GLP-1s in their lifetime — a much higher rate than the general public — while some have openly misused them.
“People with eating disorders are a clinically diverse population who may be consuming GLP-1 RAs in contraindicated ways to maintain eating disorder psychopathology through rapid restriction and weight loss,” they wrote in their paper, published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry.
Big Pharma Restructures to Ride Out ‘Existential Risk’
Even biopharma’s biggest players have been forced to take a hard look at their businesses and realign their cost structures to cope with the continued and compounding challenges plaguing the industry. In the coming years, Big Pharma will have to reckon with what analyst Mitchell Kapoor calls an “existential risk” to the industry.
“Between 2025 and 2030, the pharmaceutical industry has been slated to face a massive $236 billion to $300 billion patent cliff,” with nearly 70 blockbuster drugs slated to lose market protections, the H.C. Wainwright director and senior biotech equity research analyst explained to BioSpace in an email.
To protect their bottom-lines, companies across biopharma have been forced to realign their priorities and cost structures, resorting to drastically pruning their pipelines and workforces. By the end of 2024, more than 20,000 jobs across biopharma had been eliminated. That number surged 47% in 2025, with some 42,700 employees laid off across the industry, according to a BioSpace tally, with 2026 not looking much brighter.
France Confirms First Ebola Case
France has confirmed its first case of Ebola — a doctor who had returned from a humanitarian mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The doctor was “immediately admitted to a specialised facility” and is in a stable condition, the French health ministry said on Wednesday.
DR Congo announced an Ebola outbreak last month, but experts believe the virus had been circulating for weeks previously. More than 260 people are confirmed to have died from the virus in the central African country, while 1,000 people have been infected.
This is the first Ebola case to have been confirmed in Europe, although an American doctor who tested positive in DR Congo was treated at a German hospital last month.
DR Congo’s neighbour, Uganda, has also confirmed Ebola cases. The World Health Organization (WHO) says 20 people are known to have been infected there and two deaths have been confirmed.
Clinical Trial Set to Test Two Drugs for Fast-Growing Ebola Outbreak
A clinical trial testing two drugs against the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, which is driving a fast-moving outbreak in Central Africa, is set to begin next week, World Health Organization officials said Wednesday. The clinical trial — which will test both Gilead Sciences’ antiviral drug remdesivir and MappBio’s monoclonal antibody MBP-134 — will be conducted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The trial is designed to test whether either of the therapies is effective against this form of Ebola, and whether using the two in combination would be a more effective way to combat the disease. The current outbreak, the third largest on record, is growing at an alarming rate in the DRC.
The outbreak is centered in the northeastern part of the country, an area with prolonged political instability, large numbers of displaced people, and food shortages. As of earlier this week, nearly 1,100 cases have been confirmed in the DRC, with over 275 deaths. Neighboring Uganda, which has seen several imported cases — and limited local spread from them — has recorded 20 confirmed cases so far, with two deaths.
FTC Files Amicus Brief to Protect Consumers From Pharmaceutical Monopolies
The Federal Trade Commission reported:
The Federal Trade Commission filed an amicus brief in an antitrust case alleging that drug manufacturer Johnson & Johnson illegally maintained a monopoly through anticompetitive conduct. The FTC’s brief seeks to protect American consumers from anticompetitive harm by asserting that longstanding Supreme Court precedent has clearly and consistently held that antitrust law is focused on the impact of anticompetitive conduct, not on the intent to harm competition.
CareFirst of Maryland Inc. brought a class action alleging that Johnson & Johnson willfully maintained its monopoly power in the market for Stelara (ustekinumab) — a drug used to treat several autoimmune conditions, including psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease — through the acquisition of Momenta Pharmaceuticals and subsequent assertion of its patent portfolio to delay or prevent competition.
The FTC’s amicus brief argues that binding precedent focuses on the effect on competition and harm to consumers, not on proof of specific intent to harm competition. Requiring a plaintiff to show that an alleged monopolist specifically intended for conduct to have anticompetitive consequences would impede vigorous antitrust enforcement, undermine competition and harm American consumers, the FTC’s brief states.
HPV Vaccine Will Not Be Included in Iran’s National Vaccination Program
While the Ministry of Health announced late last year that it was reviewing the addition of the HPV vaccine to the national vaccination program, the process has been halted following the outbreak of war and the subsequent escalation of pharmaceutical and economic difficulties. Its ultimate fate remains uncertain.
In March last year, Seyed Mohsen Zahraei, head of the Ministry of Health’s Department of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases, announced that the inclusion of the HPV vaccine had been reviewed and scientifically approved by the National Immunization Committee.
However, he noted that a final decision would still require the collection and analysis of supplementary data regarding how the vaccine would meet the goals of the country’s immunization program.
