Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.

Paragraph: The release makes no mention of the cost of the drug in question, Tenofovir. A web search found that the cost for a month’s supply of the antiviral drug averages just over $1,000. For some patients, that cost may be prohibitive. The cost is an issue of particular concern for developing countries, but it is also true that the price may be much lower for them than in the United States. Many pharmaceutical companies offer their drugs at steeply discounted rates in poorer countries to expand access to life-saving medicines. The release clearly says that 68 percent of women receiving the drug reduced their viral load while only 2 percent of the women in the control group had that success. It also says that the transmission of hepatitis B from mother to newborn dropped from 18 percent to 5 percent, an important clinical outcome. The release includes a discussion of harms. It states that “tenofovir was well tolerated; only one participant treated with tenofovir voluntarily withdrew from the study due to nausea.”  It also says that researchers “found no significant differences between the tenofovir-treated group and the control group with regard to fetal development and infant growth.”  Lastly, it calls for longer term, observational studies to confirm the safety of fetal exposure to tenofovir treatment. The release provides a good overview of the randomized, placebo-controlled trial which was undertaken to gauge the efficacy of the drug in both reducing the viral load of hepatitis-B-positive mothers and reducing the rate of transmission of the disease from mother to newborn. It offers solid, numerical evidence of both outcomes. It describes the number of patients (200 pregnant women), defined what constituted a “high” viral load, and described the approximate length of treatment. It did omit a mention of whether the trial was blinded. This release does not commit disease mongering. The release notes that the research is funded by Gilead Sciences. It should also have mentioned that a corresponding author disclosed speaking and advising fees from Gilead, according to the published study. The release is comparing the use of an antiviral drug given to pregnant women versus the normal procedure of giving both a vaccine and immune globulin. The release doesn’t mention that tenofovir (marketed as Viread), the drug being tested, is already an FDA approved drug so many readers may not know that it’s available. It was approved by the FDA in 2001 for HIV and in 2008 for chronic hepatitis B. The release just barely implies novelty with this statement which suggests a change in treating infected women who are pregnant: “Based on the findings, the investigators recommend that women be tested for HBV viral load at week 28 of pregnancy. Those with a high viral load should receive tenofovir treatment starting at gestational week 30 until delivery to reduce the risk of transmission to their infants.” While the drug itself isn’t novel, positive outcomes from a controlled trial on pregnant women carrying the virus does seem to introduce a new treatment approach. This release does not use any unjustifiable language. Claim: Antiviral Treatment During Pregnancy Reduces Mother-to-Child Transmission of Hepatitis B
This news release describes a clinical trial testing whether an antiviral drug given to pregnant women in their third trimester reduces their hepatitis B viral load. The study also examined whether the drug limits the transmission of the virus from mother to baby. The answers to both questions are yes, suggesting a new strategy for dealing with the spread of this disease. The release does a good job describing harms, quantifying benefits and describing the study protocol. Because the cost of hepatitis drugs has been widely debated for the past few years, a mention of the drug’s cost would have made the release stronger. Almost 240 million people are infected with hepatitis B virus and about 780,000 die each year from the disease, according to the World Health Organization. The hepatitis B virus infects the liver and while many recover with treatment, it can become a chronic infection. Babies and young children infected with the virus are more likely to develop chronic hepatitis B. If administering a drug to infected mothers reduces the proportion of newborns getting the disease, it would be a considerable improvement in public health.

Paragraph: Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou (C) arrives at a news conference at the end of a euro zone summit in Brussels, October 27, 2011. REUTERS/Yves Herman “Some were under such pressure that they needed medical attention. I see George Zanias, thankfully with us. But George Glynos was unable to join us after suffering a heart attack,” Papandreou told a news conference in Brussels after an 11-hour EU summit. Like many of their EU counterparts, Greek officials have worked punishing hours under enormous stress for months. The debt crisis has taken its toll not only on their country and the euro, but on their health. Government officials said Greece’s chief economic adviser, Zanias, developed very high blood pressure during Sunday’s summit and was ordered to stay in his room all day Monday. Papandreou’s aide Glynos suffered a heart attack in Athens after Sunday’s summit and missed Wednesday’s meeting. “Your body revolts. You go from a plane to meeting after meeting with little sleep, you drink too much coffee and you are forced to eat bad food. It’s an unnatural life and there comes a point when we’ll all pay for it,” said a Greek Finance Ministry official who did not want to be named. While leaders dined on giant shrimp with aubergines followed by roast turbot and a trio of sorbets, for the delegations, usually waiting anxiously to be briefed on a different floor, the dining is not as exciting. “The food is terrible. You eat sandwiches and junk food all day. I got really sick from it Sunday,” said one Greek delegate who declined to be named. But even after a meal of roast turbot, the tension is just as high for the leaders meeting in a vast, windowless conference room in the upper reaches of the European Council’s headquarters in Brussels. They entered the building at around 5 p.m. Wednesday, and were still bargaining over a deal to rescue the euro zone from its debt crisis almost 11 hours later. At around 2 a.m., when negotiations were at their peak, a team of around 15 medics gathered in the lobby of the brown marble-fronted Justus Lipsius building, although the reason was not immediately clear. EU officials said the talks were extremely intense, with hard-nosed negotiation over very specific numbers before leaders would agree on the outline of a plan to reduce Greek debt and convince banks to take losses. They knew their decisions had to reassure edgy financial markets, but could also cause big losses for financial institutions and perhaps lead to the nationalization of Greek banks. One senior EU official said the talks progressed extremely slowly. In the early hours of Thursday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the IMF’s Christine Lagarde entered into direct negotiations with representatives of private sector banks and insurers to persuade them voluntarily to accept heavy losses on Greek debt. At one point, euro zone negotiators said it might be necessary to force the banks and insurers to take losses if they didn’t accept at least a 50 percent loss on their investments — a move that would constitute an immediate default on Greek debt, with unpredictable fallout for Greece and the European economy. Such a threat is likely to have caused enormous stress to the Greek team, which repeatedly said ahead of the summit that it wanted to do everything to avoid defaulting on its 210 billion euros of private sector debt. “It is hugely tiring. You have to stay mentally focused, and it helps to be physically fit. You go to bed at maybe two in the morning and are up early. There’s a huge amount of information you have to be able to process,” said Michael Denison, special adviser to David Miliband when he was Britain’s foreign secretary, and now research director for the London-based consultancy Control Risks. EU summits are frequently high-pressure events. The leaders gather on the restricted upper floors of the building and barely move from the negotiating room until agreements are reached. “It’s a very unhealthy room, with no fresh air, and you don’t know if it’s day or night outside,” the Greek delegate said. “During 11 hours of talks, the leaders took two half-hour breaks — and that was not to rest, but to brief delegations.”   The leaders usually sit around a vast oval table in the low-ceilinged wood-paneled room. Behind them is a separate table for aides and advisers, and on one side of the room a wall of glass booths contains the interpreters. Summits are frequently heated and exhausting, with diplomats telling of heads of state who lose their temper or even fall asleep at critical moments. Not infrequently, they may go to change a shirt or freshen up when the strain begins to show. One official half-jokingly said that supplies of fresh bottles of water to the meeting room are sometimes halted in order to add extra pressure on the negotiators to wrap it up. “Part of the trick is to be able to move on from a topic immediately once a decision has been made,” Denison said. “But, however you do it, you need ministers who can keep the pace at these kind of meetings.” Claim: Do EU summits need a health warning?.
In the small hours of Thursday, George Papandreou thanked his aides for helping clinch a second bailout deal for debt-ridden Greece, and admitted the strain had almost killed one of them.

Paragraph: We don’t think that cost is relevant here. Like the story in Newsweek, which we also reviewed, this story does not provide an adequate sense of the size of the potential benefits, stating: In the study, those who met the physical activity target by exercising through the week had a 35% lower risk of death than the inactive adults, with cardiovascular deaths down 41% and a 21% lower risk of cancer death. Using only relative risk rates such as these doesn’t tell the full story. Read more on why absolute risk rates should also be included in news stories. It also makes the study sound like it was experimental in fashion, conflating association with causation. “People who cram all their exercise into one or two sessions at the weekend benefit nearly as much as those who work out more frequently, researchers say. A study of more than 60,000 adults in England and Scotland found that “weekend warriors” lowered their risk of death by a similar margin to those who spread the same amount of exercise over the whole week.” See more on the importance of not overstating observational findings. Although not explicit the story does provide some information on the potential harms before embarking on a “weekend warrior” status. The lead author of the paper recommended, “… to start with moderate exercise, such as brisk walking, and then to set realistic, incremental goals to boost confidence without running the risk of setbacks due to injury. “A middle aged or older person should do as much as 12 weeks of moderate exercise before introducing vigorous exercise.” The story provides some information about the study design, but is silent on the limitations, and they are significant. For example, the inactive population studied was 7 years older, had more current smokers, and suffered more from unspecified “long standing illness” than the participants who were active. Physical activity was only recorded at baseline. Also, more than 90% of the participants were white. No evidence of disease mongering here. The sources don’t appear to have any conflicts of interest, and there was one additional source included beyond the lead researcher. The story discusses the impact of different activity levels on early death risk. The ability to exercise is generally available, so this is N/A. Unlike the Newsweek story, the Guardian does discuss what’s novel: “The novel finding is that it appears the duration, and possibly the intensity, of leisure time physical activity is more important than the frequency,” Ekelund said. The story does not appear to rely on a news release. Claim: Weekend workouts can benefit health as much as a week of exercise, say researchers

This story looks at an observational study comparing frequency of exercise vs no exercise on early risk of death, with an emphasis placed on “weekend warrior” style exercise. Like we saw in our review of Newsweek’s take on this study, this story from The UK Guardian confuses association with causation. It also didn’t mention any of the study’s limitations, which were plentiful. However, we were pleased to see the inclusion of an independent source, who helped establish what was novel about the study findings. Many people struggle to get enough exercise, and if the study’s findings are verifiable, then this is good news for people who can only exercise on the weekends. However, news stories shouldn’t overstate the findings nor mislead people about just how beneficial it really is.