Novo Nordisk is now just Novo; night blindness traced to a new retinal disease; the health effects of remote work — Morning Medical Update

Novo Nordisk is now just Novo

The Danish drugmaker keeps Novo Nordisk A/S as its legal name and will detail a revised corporate strategy Sept. 21.

Novo Nordisk will go by "Novo" in day-to-day use, the company said Sept. 14, announcing a rebrand built around the line "Lasting Health Starts Now." Novo Nordisk A/S remains the legal company name, and the updated identity keeps the Apis bull logo. A new set of culture principles, "The Novo Way," covers customer obsession, competitiveness, clarity, and care and integrity.

Novo's Copenhagen shares are down nearly 15% this year, Reuters reported, and the company scrapped two late-stage trials of the experimental heart drug ziltivekimab last week amid competition from Eli Lilly in the obesity and diabetes market. The maker of Ozempic and Wegovy (semaglutide) said it will detail an updated corporate strategy at a Capital Markets Day on Sept. 21 in London.

Night blindness traced to a new retinal disease

Carriers in their 50s had 20/20 vision and normal-looking retinas but abnormal rod recovery in the dark.

A variant in EFEMP1, a gene already linked to a retinal disease that attacks central vision, causes a separate late-onset degeneration that erodes peripheral and night vision, an international team reported Sept. 10. The p.Arg140Trp variant segregated with disease in three unrelated families in the U.S., Switzerland and the Czech Republic. Researchers are calling the condition EFEMP1-associated late-onset retinal degeneration.

Four carriers in one family, examined at ages 50 to 58, had 20/20 vision, normal fundus appearance and normal electroretinograms, yet markedly delayed rod-mediated dark adaptation. "This gives us a functional marker of disease at a stage when photoreceptor cells have not yet been lost," said Artur V. Cideciyan, Ph.D., co-director of Penn's Center for Hereditary Retinal Degenerations. The case series, published in JAMA Ophthalmology, drew on three families, and the authors said how widely the variant occurs is unknown.

Remote workdays add 44 minutes of sitting

Hybrid workers also logged 21 fewer minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity on days they stayed home.

Hybrid workers spent 44 more minutes sedentary and 14 more minutes in bed on remote workdays than on office days, a Finnish study of 97 university employees found. Participants wore thigh-worn accelerometers for seven days. Light physical activity fell 37 minutes on remote days and moderate-to-vigorous activity fell 21 minutes, a 43% relative decline.

Most of the added sitting came out of time spent standing, a net shift of 19 minutes a day. "One possible explanation is that, unlike in offices generally, standing workstations are not always available in a home setting," said Kristin Suorsa, Ph.D., of the University of Turku. Time in bed was self-reported rather than measured, and the sample was drawn from university employees, limiting generalizability. The study appeared in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.