Current Events

(Reuters Health) - The risk of ovarian cancer was one-third higher among women who regularly powdered their genitals with talc, a recent study found.

Researchers asked 2,041 women with ovarian cancer and 2,100 similar women without ovarian cancer about their talcum powder use. Those who said they routinely applied talc to their crotches, sanitary napkins, tampons and underwear had a 33 percent higher risk of ovarian cancer, according to a report in Epidemiology.

Lead author Dr. Daniel W. Cramer, who heads the Obstetrics and Gynecology Epidemiology Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, has unsuccessfully called for warning labels on talcum powder.

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Johnson & Johnson must pay $72 million to the family of a woman who blamed her fatal ovarian cancer on the company’s talcum powder in the first state-court case over the claims to go to trial.

Jurors in St. Louis on Monday concluded J&J should pay $10 million in compensatory damages and $62 million in a punishment award to the family of Jackie Fox, who died of ovarian cancer last year after using Johnson’s baby powder and another talc-based product for years.

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Honda Motor Co. is preparing a recall for the 2016 Civic compact in the U.S. and has ordered dealers to stop selling some versions of the car, months after beginning sales of the crucial new model.

The automaker issued a stop-sale notice to dealers in late January, spokesman Chris Martin said in an e-mail, declining to give specific details including the number of vehicles before the official recall statement. Blogs including Jalopnik and Autoblog earlier this month cited a dealer service bulletin posted on the enthusiast site CivicX.com that said about 34,000 Civics were involved and the fault was with missing or mis-set piston rings that could cause engines to stall or fail.

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The world’s largest provider of kidney dialysis equipment and services has agreed to pay $250 million to settle thousands of lawsuits from dialysis patients and their relatives claiming that the company’s products had caused heart problems and deaths.

The settlement was announced by Fresenius Medical Care, a German company whose North American division is one of the two large dialysis providers in the United States.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration may have greatly underestimated the number of fetal deaths among women who became pregnant after using Bayer AG's Essure contraceptive device, according to a private analyst who combed through the agency's public database.

The FDA has cited five fetal deaths in women who became pregnant after using Essure, two metal coils inserted into the fallopian tubes.

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Use of osteoporosis drugs, once heavily advertised by celebrity spokeswomen, has dropped by more than 50% in recent years amid reports of such serious side effects as sudden bone fractures.

Yet many experts say the benefits of the drugs, known as bisphosphonates, far outweigh the risks for many users.

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A top advisor at the German automaker, known internally as the “fireman,” appears to have advised senior executives about VW’s diesel problems as early as May 2014. The maker only acknowledged cheating on emissions tests in September 2015, responding to charges by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $3.2 billion to end a joint federal-state investigation into its handling of mortgage-backed securities, the fourth deal to be struck in a probe of the role played by big U.S. banks in the subprime mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis it spawned.

The settlement, announced Thursday by federal and state officials, includes $550 million in cash and other benefits for New York, on top of $2.6 billion in payments previously disclosed in a regulatory filing.

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Cook Medical is recalling 360 lots of its single lumen central venous catheters, pressure monitoring sets and trays due to issues with catheter tip fracture and separation.

A total of 17,872 devices are subject to the recall, according to Cook, who said it began notifying customers and distributors of the issue in January and that it has contacted the FDA and other regulatory bodies over the issue.

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Daimler AG,  Volkswagen AG and  BMW AG recalled about 2.3 million U.S. vehicles since Tuesday to replace potentially defective Takata Corp. air bags.

The recalls, detailed in company statements and government filings, are part of the 5.1 million vehicle recall expansion that Takata telegraphed to U.S. regulators in late January. The German companies join Honda Motor Co. and Ford Motor Co., both of which already widened recalls following the ninth U.S. fatality tied to Takata’s safety devices.

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Daimler AG said recalling about 841,000 vehicles to fix potentially defective Takata Corp. air bags will cost the German automaker about 340 million euros ($384 million) and cut into the profit it reported last week for 2015.

The automaker will repair about 705,000 Mercedes-Benz cars and 136,000 Daimler vans, according to a company statement. The cost of replacing Takata’s air bags, already the largest consumer-safety recall in U.S. history, reduces group net income for last year to 8.7 billion euros from the 8.94 billion euros outlined on Feb. 4.

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