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Novo Nordisk A/S has a successor waiting in the wings for the generation of weight-loss shots it pioneered: a pill that helps people shed pounds without the drawbacks of an injection.The medicine is the next frontier in the obesity fight, promising further billions in revenue, and Novo is leading once again. Trouble is, it can’t launch the drug widely without endangering its existing best-sellers.The pill helps patients lose roughly as much weight as the blockbuster Wegovy. But the oral version requires far more of the same active ingredient, called semaglutide, and Novo already can’t make enough of it to meet demand.That leaves Novo in a bind. Either it finds a way to further ramp up production or it curtails the pill’s launch, ceding ground to rivals rushing to develop competing products...

An experimental weight-loss shot from Amgen Inc.—taken less frequently than wildly popular treatments from Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk A/S—appears to keep weight off even after patients stop taking it.Patients given a monthly injection of Amgen’s drug, dubbed MariTide, lost up to 14.5% of their body weight in just 12 weeks, according to a small, early-stage study published Monday in the journal Nature Metabolism. And some people kept the weight off for up to 150 days after stopping the drug, findings show.“That is really a remarkable and distinguishing characteristic of this molecule,” Narimon Honarpour, senior vice president of global development at Amgen, said in an interview.Investors and analysts have been eagerly awaiting updates on Amgen’s shot since the Thousand Oaks, Calif...

COVID-19 doesn’t always affect people the same way. If someone gets sick, for example, not everyone in that person’s close social circle will get infected—even if they recently spent time together. But why? In a paper recently published in Nature Communications, researchers delve into the different factors at play, from genetics to public health interventions, all of which affect how a virus spreads from one person to another. They found that at the beginning of the pandemic, environmental factors like social distancing, isolation, hand washing, mask wearing, and vaccination played a bigger role in whether people got infected, while over time, genetic factors have become more important. Now, genetics may account for anywhere from 30% to 70% of one’s chance of getting COVID-19, they conclud...

Rizo-López Foods, a California-based cheese and dairy company, is recalling more than 60 products sold nationwide following a listeria outbreak that has killed two people and caused more than 20 hospitalizations. The CDC previously investigated a listeria outbreak of the same strain in 2017 and 2021, but was unable to trace it back to a specific brand. Last month, they reopened the case after new illnesses were reported in December and the same strain was found in a cheese sample from Rizo-López Foods.What foods have been recalled? The recalled products include cheese, yogurt, and sour cream sold under the brand names Tio Francisco, Don Francisco, Rizo Bros, Rio Grande, Food City, El Huache, La Ordena, San Carlos, Campesino, Santa Maria, Dos Ranchitos, Casa Cardenas, and 365 Whole Foods Ma...