The concept of schizophrenia is dying. Harried for decades by psychology, it now appears to have been fatally wounded by psychiatry, the very profession that once sustained it. Its passing will not be mourned. Today, having a diagnosis of schizophrenia is associated with a life-expectancy reduction of nearly two decades. By some criteria, only one in seven people...
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Anti-inflammatory therapy cuts risk of lung cancer
In most clinical trials for cancer therapy, investigators test treatments in patients with advanced disease. But a recent cardiovascular secondary prevention study has given researchers a unique opportunity: to explore the effectiveness of giving a drug to patients before cancer emerges. At the European Society of Cardiology meeting, Paul M. Ridker, MD, director of the...
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An end to the agony of trying uncertain drugs? Scientists can now grow ‘mini organs’ for each patient to see how it reacts to new untested treatment
A lab in Holland is using mini organs for cystic fibrosis sufferers to see how a drug would affect them without putting them through the risks of trying it Els van de Heijden, 53, was able to take an unproven drug after scientists tested it on a lab-grown version of her gut The move is...
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Retinal Imaging for Alzheimer’s Detection
A team of researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and NeuroVision Imaging, a Sacramento, California firm, have developed a retinal imaging system that could allow early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease is the accumulation of beta-amyloid protein in the brain. There are numerous ways to monitor levels of beta-amyloid...
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Physicist reports binary marker of preclinical and clinical Alzheimer’s disease
A new technique shows high potential for providing a discrete, non-invasive biomarker of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) at the individual level during both preclinical and clinical stages. The proposed biomarker has a large effect size (0.9) and high accuracy, sensitivity and specificity (100 percent) in identifying symptomatic AD patients within a research sample, according to Sanja...
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Putting it to the test
It’s estimated that about 788,000 people worldwide died of liver cancer in 2015, the second-leading cause of cancer deaths, according to the latest statistics from the World Health Organization. One of the major challenges in combatting this disease is detecting it early because symptoms often don’t appear until later stages. But a team of researchers...
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Undergraduates develop tools to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease before patients show symptoms
A team of seven University of Maryland A. James Clark School of Engineering undergraduates earned the top prize in this year’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) challenge for their efforts to develop low-cost tools to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease before patients show symptoms. “This represents a monumental achievement, not simply...
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New app uses smartphone selfies to screen for pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer has one of the worst prognoses—with a five-year survival rate of 9 percent—in part because there are no telltale symptoms or non-invasive screening tools to catch a tumor before it spreads. Now, University of Washington researchers have developed an app that could allow people to easily screen for pancreatic cancer and other diseases—by...
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Cheap Electrochemical Diagnostic System Featuring a Triboelectric Generator
Scientists at Purdue University have developed cheap, portable, and self-powered devices for performing electrochemical analysis for diagnostic purposes. Made mostly of paper, these devices can be produced in large quantities and used by just about anyone with minor training. The current prototype of the device is able to detect glucose, uric acid, and l-lactate, and other biomarkers can...
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The Ever-Expanding T-Cell World: A Primer
New types of T cells seem to pop up in the scientific literature with increasing frequency. Just this June, for instance, University of Melbourne immunologist Angela Pizzolla and her colleagues described a type of tissue-resident memory T (Trm) cell in the nose that, unlike other Trm cells, can develop from “killer T cells” without antigen exposure or growth-factor stimulation....