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MONDAY, Oct. 5, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- On Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of a drug combination for first-line treatment of unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) -- the first drug regimen to be approved for mesothelioma in 16 years. The combined regimen of Opdivo (nivolumab) 360 mg every three weeks and Yervoy (ipilimumab) 1 mg/kg ever six weeks is now the second approved treatment for adults with MPM. According to the FDA, the combination of these monoclonal antibodies has been shown to decrease tumor growth by enhancing T-cell function. Approval was based on data from the Phase 3 CheckMate-743 trial, a randomized, open-label trial of 605 patients with previously untreated unresectable MPM. Patients were randomly assigned to undergo...

MONDAY, Oct. 5, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- After being treated for COVID-19 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for three days, President Donald Trump said Monday afternoon he will be released from the hospital Monday evening. He tweeted about his impending discharge, saying, "I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! …" Trump's medical team delivered an update on his condition Monday afternoon, saying he would receive his fifth and final dose of the antiviral drug remdesivir at the White House tomorrow. His physician, Dr. Sean Conley, noted that Trump hasn't had a fever in 72 hours. Conley confirmed that Trump would return to the White House after having spent three nights at Walter Reed, although he was not "out of the...

MONDAY, Oct. 5, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Caffeine may reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease in people who have a gene mutation associated with the movement disorder, researchers report. "These results are promising and encourage future research exploring caffeine and caffeine-related therapies to lessen the chance that people with this gene develop Parkinson's," said study author Dr. Grace Crotty, of Massachusetts General Hospital. "It's also possible that caffeine levels in the blood could be used as a biomarker to help identify which people with this gene will develop the disease, assuming caffeine levels remain relatively stable," Crotty added in a news release from the journal Neurology. The study was published online Sept. 30 in the journal. Previous studies have shown that...

MONDAY, Oct. 5, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- For people with back pain caused by sciatica, it might be a good idea to start physical therapy sooner rather than later, a new clinical trial suggests. Sciatica refers to pain that radiates along the sciatic nerve, which runs from the lower back, through the hip and down the back of the leg. It's often the result of a bulging spinal disc that compresses the nerve. In general, people with sciatica should try to remain active and not take to bed, said study author Julie Fritz, a physical therapist and associate dean for research at the University of Utah's College of Health, in Salt Lake City. But it's one thing to tell patients to stay active, and another to give them targeted exercises to deal with the condition, Fritz said. So her team...