On Wednesday an FDA advisory committee will consider whether Meridia, Abbott’s weight-loss drug, should remain on the market or be yanked — as it was in Europe earlier this year.

So far the FDA has said the drug shouldn’t be used in patients with a history of cardiovascular disease. And, as Dow Jones Newswires reports in its preview of the meeting, the agency advises against Meridia’s continued use in people who don’t lose at least 5% of their body weight during the first three to six months on the drug. (The thought is that patients who aren’t getting a significant benefit from the drug shouldn’t bear any of its risks.)

The issue at hand: what else should the FDA do, if anything? According to

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Companies expect to spend an average of 5.9% more per employee on health insurance next year after shifting some costs to workers and making other changes, according to a survey by Mercer.

If they made no money-saving changes, per-employee costs would rise by an average of 10.1%, including an average 2.3% bump from complying with certain provisions of health-care overhaul, according to the survey of 1,091 employers.

AKaiser Family Foundation survey released last week found employees paid about 14% more for family coverage this year. Mercer’s survey looks ahead to next year and finds 57% of employers will ask workers to pay at least a somewhat greater share of the cost of coverage. S

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An antidepressant drug delivered through a patch on the skin is no better than placebo for helping smokers kick the habit, new rese#8217;s disease, depression, and dementia, in both pill and patch form. Nicotine craving is a major hurdle for smokers trying to abstain, and selegiline can help maintain levels of brain chemicals like dopamine that are reduced in the absence of nicotine.

“That’s why we hoped that selegiline might reduce the cravings and urges associated with quitting and thus help make it easier to quit,” Dr. Joel D. Killen of Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, one of the rese

Its a drastic step to have surgery to remove ones breasts or ovaries solely because of a genetic risk of developing the disease in the future. So obviously, women and their doctors want to know exactly what benefits those preventative surgeries are likely to bring.

A new study of women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations which raise the lifetime risk of breast cancer to between 56% and 84% and of ovarian cancer to anywhere from 10% to 63% found that those who had their ovaries and fallopian tubes removed were less likely to die over the course of the study.

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