For men who are weighing the pros and cons of prostate cancer screening, a new study strengthens the evidence that testing can reduce deaths from this cancer, something two earlier large landmark clinical trials appeared to reach different conclusions about. The findings do not resolve many of the questions that remain about prostate cancer screening,...
Category: <span>Diagnostic</span>
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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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Novel approach to track HIV infection
HIV infecting a human cell. Northwestern Medicine scientists have developed a novel method of tracking HIV infection, allowing the behavior of individual virions—infectious particles—to be connected to infectivity. The findings could help lead to the development of novel therapies for HIV prevention and treatment by providing a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of HIV’s...
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Is it really Lyme disease? New test may be able to tell
Tick bites can transmit Lyme disease. WASHINGTON — Diagnosing if a tick bite caused Lyme or another disease can be difficult but scientists are developing a new way to do it early — using a “signature” of molecules in patients’ blood. It’s still highly experimental, but initial studies suggest the novel tool just might uncover early-stage Lyme disease more accurately...
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Is it really Lyme disease? New test may be able to tell
Tick bites can transmit Lyme disease. WASHINGTON — Diagnosing if a tick bite caused Lyme or another disease can be difficult but scientists are developing a new way to do it early — using a “signature” of molecules in patients’ blood. It’s still highly experimental, but initial studies suggest the novel tool just might uncover early-stage Lyme disease more accurately...
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Scientists develop barcoding tool for stem cells
New genetic barcoding technology allows scientists to identify differences in origin between individual blood cells. New technology that tracks the origin of blood cells challenges scientific dogma A 7-year-project to develop a barcoding and tracking system for tissue stem cells has revealed previously unrecognized features of normal blood production: New data from Harvard Stem Cell...