sKan, a device designed to quickly and easily detect melanomas, has won this year’s international James Dyson Award A new device called the sKan has won the 2017 international James Dyson Award. The sKan makes heat maps of the skin to identify anomalies associated with melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, to...
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New technologies can SMELL sickness: Groundbreaking breath tests could detect up to 17 diseases
Scientists are developing new diagnostic technologies that can detect diseases by the smell of your breath The diagnostic tests rely on the premise that everyone’s healthy breath has a profile of chemical compound that give it its smell Diseases have their own chemical compound signatures, that animals like dogs and mosquitoes can smell The scientists hope...
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Research finds injury from contact sport has harmful, though temporary effect on memory
Melissa McCradden, a neuroscience postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University. McMaster University neuroscientists studying sports-related head injuries have found that it takes less than a full concussion to cause memory loss, possibly because even mild trauma can interrupt the production of new neurons in a region of the brain responsible for memory. Though such losses...
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Smell test challenge suggests clinical benefit for some before development of Alzheimer’s
PET scan of a human brain with Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) may have discovered a way to use a patient’s sense of smell to treat Alzheimer’s disease before it ever develops. Having an impaired sense of smell is recognized as one...
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Average cost of care in year after ovarian cancer surgery around $100K
(HealthDay)—For women with ovarian cancer who underwent both surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy, the average medical expenditures are about $100,000 in the first year after surgery, according to a study published online Nov. 7 in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Alexandra S. Bercow, M.D., from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, and colleagues conducted...
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So long chart audits
Ask health plan executives about chart audits and you are certain to hear a collective groan. They are labor-intensive, quite expensive and a significant pain point for physicians. And it’s seemingly become an annual event with no end in sight. Until now. Advanced analytics with clinical integration offers health plans and providers the ability to...
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Smear tests could be cut to three in a lifetime: Women could soon be spared regular ordeal of a check due to more sensitive tests being rolled out
At the moment women in England are invited for cervical cancer screening 12 times between the ages of 25 and 64 The frequency of the tests is thought to be contributing to falling uptake And in future, women who have received the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine at school might only need to be screened three...
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Healthy mother-of-three died of freak cardiac arrest after paramedics enrolled her in medical study WITHOUT her consent
Cristina Belmonte, a healthy 45-year-old, went into cardiac arrest and died suddenly in August 2017 The paramedics that treated her used a different method to intubate Cristina as a part of a trial that she didn’t consent to taking part in Cristina died from cardiac arrest, but her husband, Manuel, did not find out that...
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Deadly combination in neurodegenerative diseases revealed
Nagoya, Japan – Neurodegenerative diseases are incurable and debilitating conditions that result in progressive degeneration and death of nerve cells, which leads to problems with movement or mental functioning. Examples include Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). ALS is characterized by degeneration of motor neurons, while FTD is characterized by progressive...
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Advancing Personalized Medicine Research in RA and Beyond: A Q&A with Dr. Sean E. Connolly
Chances are when people think of biomarkers, they think of cancer, thanks to the explosion of research and targeted diagnostics and treatment in recent years. But scientific understanding of biomarkers in autoimmune diseases is also rapidly advancing, and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) scientists are leading the charge. We sat down with Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Sean E. Connolly,...