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An announcement has been made by Merck that its anti-PD-1 therapy, pembrolizumab is the first treatment to be approved under the UK's new Early Access to Medicines Scheme (EAMS).

It has been informed that Merck is known as MSD outside the US and Canada. According to Merck, its anti-PD-1 therapy, pembrolizumab is marketed in the United States under the name KEYTRUDA. According to experts, pembrolizumab received acceptance under the scheme for the treatment of advanced melanoma that was based on the importance of the early study results and unmet medical requirement.

According to a study, people who take psychedelic drugs do not have higher risk of developing mental health problems. The study has been published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. In an earlier study, the scientists made efforts to find links between mental health problems and psychedelic drug use; however, they didn't reach any conclusion.

The new study was conducted on 135,095 randomly-selected adults from the US National Health Survey (2008-2011), out of which 19,299 of the participants were using psychedelic drugs. Clinical psychologists Teri Suzanne Krebs and Pål-Orjan Johansen from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology located in Trondheim analyzed the answers of the respondents.

The FDA has altered the label on the quit-smoking drug Chantix for creating awareness and address the concern over its potential to lower one’s tolerance level on alcohol and association with an annual risk of seizures.

The FDA warns, “Until patients know how Chantix affects their ability to tolerate alcohol, they should decrease the amount of alcohol they drink. Patients who have a seizure while taking Chantix should stop the medicine and seek medical attention immediately”.

The information provided by Chantix maker Pfizer and cases in the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System database served the basis of developing the new label.

According to a government report released on Tuesday, almost 8 million people can lose up to $24 billion per year in health insurance subsidies due to a Supreme Court case threatening President Barack Obama's law.

As per estimates given by The Associated Press, the health overhaul opponents argue that subsidies are illegal in those states where the federal government has taken complete charge of running the health insurance marketplace, or exchanges.

Several justices heard arguments in the past week over the issue. There is higher possibility that the final result over the issue would come in late June.

Scientists have made the first exoplanet discovered in 2007 in a habitable or ‘Goldilocks Zone’, a prime candidate in the search for alien life.

The exoplanet Gliese 581d is located only 20 million light years from Earth. Following its discovery, it was named as ‘super-Earth’ as it holds the possibility of supporting liquid water and microbial life on its possibly rocky surface. The mass of the planet is around seven times that of the Earth.

Gliese 581d orbits around Gliese 581, a red dwarf star in the constellation Libra. It is in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’, known technically as the ‘Circumstellar Habitable Zone’ or simply the ‘Habitable Zone’ as it’s the zone around a star within which a planet could have sufficient atmospheric pressure and liquid water to support life.

A video by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has revealed the captivating motion of various satellites orbiting the Earth. The animation showns the 19 satellites’ earth-observation paths they move around the planet.

The space agency uses the satellites to monitor conditions on the planet. The video created by the agency’s Scientific Visualization Studio has also included the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System mounted on the International Space Station.

The video includes the four satellites, Aqua, Aura, CloudSat and Calipso. These satellites travel together in the same orbit. Aqua, which was launched in 2002, has been carrying six instruments that observe the earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land, snow covers and vegetation.