WASHINGTON  — The Drug Enforcement Administration is reversing a regulation that had been expected to create shortages of morphine and other opioid injectables, according to a DEA letter to drugmakers obtained by STAT. The DEA dictates the quantity of controlled substances that drug companies are allowed to make. Until this year, those quotas were...

Pandemics start slowly — a few cases here, a few there — until suddenly people are sick or dying everywhere. Early detection by monitoring wastewater can help short-circuit that cycle. It’s difficult to tell what is happening right now with highly pathogenic avian influenza A H5N1 (bird flu), which is rapidly spreading among cows and other mammals....

Three years ago, Moderna, flush with cash from Covid vaccine sales, announced it would start investing in the burgeoning field of gene editing. It created a new division called Moderna Genomics and struck a collaboration with Metagenomi, a new startup specializing in developing new gene-editing enzymes. “This will be a completely new approach for Moderna...

CVS Health got walloped at the outset of 2024 as older adults in its Medicare plans continue to get a lot more medical care than the company expected. CVS’ operating income fell by 34% — roughly $1.2 billion — in the first quarter compared with the prior-year period, according to results released Tuesday. The company, which absorbed the health insurer...

On Wednesday, UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty appeared before Congress to answer for what lawmakers called a “single attack [that] kicked off a cascading series of crises that are unmasking some deep vulnerabilities in the core of our health care system”: the February Change Healthcare cyberattack that is still disrupting payment processing across the...

LONDON — In 2021, a team of Italian researchers reported that an experimental gene therapy they had developed seemed to be correcting the metabolic issues at the core of a rare genetic disease that left children unable to break down sugar molecules. There remained an open question, however, about whether the therapy could address a particularly debilitating...