Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

Officials in Cumberland County say the Department of Health was told Saturday that a person affiliated with the university was hospitalized with a “possible diagnosis of a bacterial meningitis infection.” They did not say if the ill individual is a student. Officials say they are coordinating with the school and the state to provide antibiotics to anyone who had direct close contact with the individual. The university sent a campus-wide notification Saturday. Meningitis is an infection of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord. The bacteria that cause the infection can spread through kissing, coughing and sharing beverages. Signs and symptoms of infection include high fever, headache, stiff neck and a rash.
Officials investigate possible meningitis case at NC college.

Luke Miels, who joined GSK in September 2017 after a contract dispute with his former employer AstraZeneca, said picking the most promising projects and developing them quickly now takes precedence over spreading the risk of failure. “In the past, 10 programs were chosen, a budget for eight was allocated. Usually what happened was that time was the trade off that was made,” he said in an interview. “Now what we do is we pick five or six programs, and concentrate investment there.”   GSK, like rivals, was in the habit of testing new drugs first on patients who had run out of other treatment options. If successful, it would try patients at an earlier stage of their disease, replacing older, established treatments. In today’s market, where rivals in the United States and China catch up fast if a new class of drug shows promise, GSK has to run costly drug tests on humans in several settings at the same time, even if it means dropping other drug candidates. “Rather than do things sequentially, you do them in parallel, or as close to parallel as possible,” Miels said. GSK, which is battling to return to profit growth, has taken this approach for instance with an experimental drug that for now goes by the code name of GSK’916 against multiple myeloma, a common and incurable type of blood cancer. Likewise, GSK doubled down on its quest to bring a drug known as GSK’165 to market as a rheumatoid arthritis treatment, even after initial results in a mid-stage drug trial did not show a clear enough reading. “This drug has very interesting effects on pain. That could potentially reduce the use of opioids and pain meds,” Miels said. More trials will be run to make the pain argument more clearly, he added. GSK expects a decline of 5%-9% in adjusted earnings per share this year, excluding exchange rate moves, as it suffers from generic competition to its inhalable lung drug Advair and pressure from rival Gilead in HIV treatments. Miels said a tougher stance on drug prices by U.S. lawmakers and medical insurers was one of the reasons for the need for speed in bringing drugs to market - to try to remain ahead of competitors for as long as possible. At the same time, rapid growth in the Chinese market was spurring a more sophisticated healthcare system there, with local biotech groups quick to catch up with Western pioneers in drug development, producing similar drugs for their home market.
GSK pharma head flags need for speed in high-pressure drug market.

The story does not address how much fevipiprant might cost and how it might compete with currently available treatments. A 2013 story in the New York Times reported that asthma inhalers ranged from $50 per month for one of the oldest drugs to as much as $350, with prices being buoyed in recent years by patent extensions. The story reported that fevipiprant “reduced a biological marker of asthma nearly five-fold in the 12-week trial involving 61 patients.” It states: “The Novartis pill works in a very precise way to block the action of inflammatory cells called eosinophils.” The story mentions that that no serious adverse events were reported in the trial. It would have been useful to note that 12 weeks is too little time to determine how an asthma drug might affect patients over decades of use. The story acknowledges that this is was a “small” trial and that more research is needed, and it correctly states what was being studied: A biological marker of asthma (and not actual symptoms or respiratory function, which a Medical Daily story we also reviewed got wrong). The story does not engage in disease-mongering. The story doesn’t contain comments from outside experts who could put some perspective on the trial results and explain what this might mean for patients. The story could have let readers know that funding came from Novartis, as well as a European Union grant program, and the Leicester (U.K.) National Institute for Health Research Respiratory Biomedical Research unit. Several researchers involved in the trial reported receiving financial compensation from Novartis and other drug companies. The story does a great job here. It mentions that pills were standard treatment for asthma decades ago, but were replaced with inhalers that deliver drugs directly into the lungs. It also mentions that drugmakers recently launched injectable drugs for severe asthma that also target eosinophils and “are developing improved asthma inhalers, including ‘smart’ devices with sensors that monitor use.” The story could have elaborated on how inhalers might compare to pills in terms of safety and efficacy, and mentioned there are other new drugs (known as leukotrene receptor antagonists) that are also available as pills. We believe the story attempts to give a realistic take, stating more study is needed to show that the drug can reduce severe asthma attacks. It also states Novartis “believes the medicine could be filed for regulatory approval in around 2019.” While this may or may not be accurate, it does let readers know that availability isn’t around the corner. The story says it’s the first asthma pill in decades—-that’s not correct. In recent years, several new drugs known as leukotriene receptor antagonists have come on the market as tablets. (The statement about this being the first pill in decades appears to come from the news release, which we also reviewed.) The story does not appear to rely solely on the news release, which we also reviewed.

Novartis asthma pill shows promise in small trial