VIVUS Inc Leads Healthcare Sector (VVUS, GALE, AMAG, STJ, ABT)

The healthcare sector is gaining with the braoder market on Wednesday thanks to strong gains from biotech sector where VIVUS Inc (NASDAQ:VVUS) made multi-year high after getting approval from the FDA for its Qsymia drug. Health Care SPDR (ETF)(NYSEARCA:XLV) is up 0.34% to $38.82.

VIVUS Inc (NASDAQ:VVUS) jumped up 14.70% to $30.35 on a thickly traded volume of 19.77 million shares. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration have finally approved Vivus Inc's Qsymia as an addition to diet and exercise for chronic weight management. Qsymia has been approved for use in adults who are obese or overweight with at least one weight-related condition such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes or high cholesterol.

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Galena Biopharma Inc (NASDAQ:GALE) among the gainers in NASDAQ and the stock increased 19.88% to $2.05. The Company announced the issuance of a key patent, originally allowed in March 2012 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office covering the use of NeuVax. NeuVax is a vaccine for inducing immunity to breast cancer recurrence in patients having low-to-intermediate IHC levels of 1+ or 2+ and a FISH rating of less than 2.0.

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AMAG Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:AMAG) soared 1.58% to $16.10. The Company said that its drug Feraheme has yielded positive results in its second Phase III study. Feraheme is a treatment for iron-deficiency anemia in adults with chronic kidney disease. The study compared Feraheme with a placebo and enrolled 808 patients at 136 sites in the U.S., Canada, India, Latvia, Hungary and Poland. The patients enrolled in the study had a history of unsatisfactory response to, or otherwise could not tolerate oral iron therapy. It was found that patients treated with Feraheme recorded an increase in hemoglobin.

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St. Jude Medical Inc (NYSE:STJ) plunged 5.56% to $37.06. The Company posted second quarter profit of $244 million or 78 cents per share compared to $241 million or 72 cents per share in the prior year period.  Revenue decreased 2% to $1.41 billion. However, analysts recently projected revenue of $1.43 billion. Gross margin increased to 72.8% from 72.7%. Overhead costs and research and development expenses were down 3.9% and 1.7% respectively. The Company estimates that it will pay about $60 million as a result of the medical device tax in 2013.

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Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT) went down 0.27% to $66.28 after the Company reported second quarter results. Profit declined 11.2% to $1.73 billion and earnings per share decreased 12.2% to $1.08. Net sales increased 2.0% to $9.81 billion. However, street analysts were expecting Abbott to deliver earnings of $1.22 per share and revenues of $9.84 billion.