Healthcare

Scientists develop 10-minute universal cancer test

Scientists have developed a universal cancer test that can detect traces of the disease in a patient’s bloodstream. The cheap and simple test uses a colour-changing fluid to reveal the presence of malignant cells anywhere in the body and provides results in less than 10 minutes. While the test is still in development, it draws on a radical new approach to cancer detection that could make routine screening for the disease a simple procedure for doctors.

The FDA just approved a drug that targets cancers based on DNA, rather than where the tumor is in your body

CDC: Outbreak of E. coli Infections Linked to Romaine Lettuce

Dual-action cancer-killing virus developed by Oxford scientists

Scientists have equipped a virus that kills carcinoma cells with a protein so it can also target and kill adjacent cells that are tricked into shielding the cancer from the immune syste The virus targets carcinomas, which are the most common type of cancer and start in cells in the skin or tissues that line or cover internal organs. A microscope image of a human colorectal adenocarcinoma showing the fibroblasts (brown) surrounding the cancer cells (blue), protecting them from the immune system (PA/Medical Research Council).

Alphabet unit halts glucose-detecting contact lens project

Alphabet Inc’s life sciences division Verily said on Friday that it was putting on hold one of its oldest and highest-profile projects, a smart contact lens designed to help monitor sugar levels. The project, started in 2014, aimed to help diabetics better manage their blood sugar levels by embedding sensors on a contact lens to monitor the glucose levels in their tears. In a blog update, Verily cited here insufficient consistency in the correlation between tear glucose and blood glucose concentrations to support the requirements of a medical device.

A cure for cancer: how to kill a killer

Last month, the Nobel prize in medicine was awarded for two breakthrough scientific discoveries heralded as having “revolutionised cancer treatment”, and “fundamentally changed the way we view how cancer can be managed”. One of them went to a charismatic, harmonica-playing Texan named Jim Allison for his breakthrough advances in cancer immunotherapy. His discovery had resulted in transformative outcomes for cancer patients and a radical new direction for cancer research.

Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

‘Spectacular’ diabetes treatment could end daily insulin injections

A potential medical breakthrough that could put an end to the daily insulin injections endured by people living with diabetes has been unveiled by Dutch scientists. By destroying the mucous membrane in the small intestine and causing a new one to develop, scientists stabilised the blood sugar levels of people with type 2 diabetes. The results have been described as “spectacular” – albeit unexpected – by the chief researchers involved.

Researchers discover a novel method to block immunosuppression in cancer

Cervical cancer set to be eliminated from Australia in global first

Google AI Tool Identifies a Tumor’s Mutations From an Image

It’s Hard for Doctors to Unlearn Things. That’s Costly for All of Us.

Researchers Identify Molecule With Anti-Aging Effects On Vascular System

A molecule produced during fasting or calorie restriction has anti-aging effects on the vascular system, which could reduce the occurrence and severity of human diseases related to blood vessels, such as cardiovascular disease, according to a study led by Georgia State University. In this study, the research team explores the link between calorie restriction (eating less or fasting) and delaying aging, which is unknown and has been poorly studied. The findings are published in the journal Molecular Cell.

UBC breakthrough opens door to $100 ultrasound machine

Engineers at the University of British Columbia have developed a new ultrasound transducer, or probe, that could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners to as little as $100. Their patent-pending innovation—no bigger than a Band-Aid—is portable, wearable and can be powered by a smartphone. Conventional ultrasound scanners use piezoelectric crystals to create images of the inside of the body and send them to a computer to create sonograms.

‘Ground-breaking’ diabetes insulin drug trialled in Cardiff

A ‘ground-breaking’ drug that helps people with diabetes re-grow insulin-making cells has been developed. About 19,000 people live with Type 1 of the condition in Wales and 90% have less than 5% of these cells left. This means they have to inject insulin

Report: billionaire Sackler family, accused of encouraging the opioid epidemic

Watch Light be Used to See And Stimulate The Inside of The Human Body And Brain

AI System Approved For Diabetic Retinopathy Diagnosis

A system designed by a University of Iowa ophthalmologist that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect diabetic retinopathy without a person interpreting the results earned Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization in April, following a clinical trial in primary care offices. Results of that study were published Aug. 28 online in Nature Digital Medicine, offering the first look at data that led to FDA clearance for IDx-DR, the first medical device that uses AI for the autonomous detection of diabetic retinopathy. The clinical trial, which also was the first study to prospectively assess the safety of an autonomous AI system in patient care, compared the performance of IDx-DR to the gold standard diagnostic for diabetic retinopathy, which is the leading cause of vision loss in adults and one of the most severe complications for the 30.3 million Americans living with diabetes.

Newly Found Enzymes Can Help Turn Type A and B Blood into Universal Type O

New anti-cancer drugs put cancers to sleep—permanently

In a world first, Melbourne scientists have discovered a new type of anti-cancer drug that can put cancer cells into a permanent sleep, without the harmful side-effects caused by conventional cancer therapies. Published today in the journal Nature, the research reveals the first class of anti-cancer drugs that work by putting the cancer cell to sleep – arresting tumour growth and spread without damaging the cells’ DNA. The new class of drugs could provide an exciting alternative for people with cancer, and has already shown great promise in halting cancer progression in models of blood and liver cancers, as well as in delaying cancer relapse.

New anti-cancer drugs put cancers to sleep—permanently

In a world first, Melbourne scientists have discovered a new type of anti-cancer drug that can put cancer cells into a permanent sleep, without the harmful side-effects caused by conventional cancer therapies. Published today in the journal Nature, the research reveals the first class of anti-cancer drugs that work by putting the cancer cell to sleep – arresting tumour growth and spread without damaging the cells’ DNA. The new class of drugs could provide an exciting alternative for people with cancer, and has already shown great promise in halting cancer progression in models of blood and liver cancers, as well as in delaying cancer relapse.

The inconvenient truth about cancer and mobile phones

On 28 March this year, the scientific peer review of a landmark United States government study concluded that there is “clear evidence” that radiation from mobile phones causes cancer, specifically, a heart tissue cancer in rats that is too rare to be explained as random occurrence. Eleven independent scientists spent three days at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, discussing the study, which was done by the National Toxicology Program of the US Department of Health and Human Services and ranks among the largest conducted of the health effects of mobile phone radiation. NTP scientists had exposed thousands of rats and mice (whose biological similarities to humans make them useful indicators of human health risks) to doses of radiation equivalent to an average mobile user’s lifetime exposure.

First ever color X-ray on a human

New Zealand scientists have performed the first-ever 3-D, colour X-ray on a human, using a technique that promises to improve the field of medical diagnostics, said Europe’s CERN physics lab which contributed imaging technology. The new device, based on the traditional black-and-white X-ray, incorporates The CERN technology, dubbed Medipix, works like a camera detecting and counting individual sub-atomic particles as they collide with pixels while its shutter is open.

Cancer cells engineered with CRISPR slay their own kin

Using gene editing, scientists have hoodwinked tumor cells into turning against their own kind. Cancer cells circulating in the bloodstream have something of a homing instinct, able to find and return to the tumor where they originated. To capitalize on that ability, researchers engineered these roving tumor cells to secrete a protein that triggers a death switch in resident tumor cells they encounter.

Amazon buys PillPack, an online pharmacy, for just under $1B

Our cancer preventing genes revealed

In our bodies, we all have genes working hard to prevent cancer. If they don’t do their job properly, rogue cells can mutate and develop into the life-threatening disease. The malfunction of one so-called “super tumour suppressor gene” known as p53 causes at least half of all cancers.

Human blood cells transformed into functional neurons

Human immune cells in blood can be converted directly into functional neurons in the laboratory in about three weeks with the addition of just four proteins, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found. The conversion occurs with relatively high efficiency — generating as many as 50,000 neurons from 1 milliliter of blood — and it can be achieved with fresh or previously frozen and stored blood samples, which vastly enhances opportunities for the study of neurological disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. A paper describing the findings was published online June 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Drone Delivery Becomes a Reality in Remote Pacific Islands

Currently, health workers in Vanuatu often hike over mountains to deliver vaccines–but drones can fly over them. This September, delivery drones will begin to fly the friendly skies of Vanuatu. And this isn’t a one-shot demonstration, like many of the stunts we’ve seen from the likes of Amazon and Google.

Toxic Chemicals From E-Waste Are Working Their Way Into Our Food Packaging

China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data

GENEVA (Reuters) – China has overtaken the United States in healthy life expectancy at birth for the first time, according to World Health Organization data. Chinese newborns can look forward to 68.7 years of healthy life ahead of them, compared with 68.5 years for American babies, the data – which relates to 2016 – showed. American newborns can still expect to live longer overall – 78.5 years compared to China’s 76.4 – but the last 10 years of American lives are not expected to be healthy.

Ingestible “bacteria on a chip” could help diagnose disease

This “bacteria-on-a-chip” approach combines sensors made from living cells with ultra-low-power electronics that convert the bacterial response into a wireless signal that can be read by a smartphone. In the new study, appearing in the May 24 online edition of Science, the researchers created sensors that respond to heme, a component of blood, and showed that they work in pigs. They also designed sensors that can respond to a molecule that is a marker of inflammation.

How gut microbes are joining the fight against cancer

Cancer has been a late bloomer in the microbiome revolution that has surged through biomedicine. Over the past few decades, scientists have linked the gut’s composition of microbes to dozens of seemingly unrelated conditions — from depression to obesity. Cancer has some provocative connections as well: inflammation is a contributing factor to some tumours and a few types of cancer have infectious origins.

Leading UK scientist reveals likely cause of childhood leukaemia

Professor Mel Greaves from The Institute of Cancer Research, London, assessed the most comprehensive body of evidence ever collected on acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) – the most common type of childhood cancer. His research concludes that the disease is caused through a two-step process of genetic mutation and exposure to infection that means it may be preventable with treatments to stimulate or ‘prime’ the immune system in infancy. The first step involves a genetic mutation that occurs before birth in the foetus and predisposes children to leukaemia – but only 1 per cent of children born with this genetic change go on to develop the disease.

The U.S. Defense Department’s Deeply Flawed Electronic Health Records Program

It seems someone is producing a banned ozone-depleting chemical again

FDA to start naming names of pharma companies blocking cheaper generics

Mice with 3D-Printed Ovaries Successfully Give Birth

AsKatherine Kornei at Science reports,the researchers used a 3D printer to build the scaffolding of the organs, weaving layers of gelatin to createtiny (15 x 15 millimeter) ovaries on glass slides. They then tested the scaffolds by embedding a follicle—the tiny sacs composed of hormone-secreting cells that containthe maturing eggs. This test suggested that the tightest weave supported the highest survival rates, reports Kornei.

How an AI Startup Could Defeat Now Unbeatable Bugs

The need for new medications is higher than ever, but so is the cost and time to bring them to market. Developing a new drug can cost billions and take as long as 14 years, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Yet with all that effort, only 8 percent of drugs make it to market, the FDA said.

Self-repairing organs could save your life in a heartbeat

WHAT becomes of the broken-hearted? In cardiac medicine, the answer is usually brutally straightforward: they die. Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide and there is often precious little we can do about it.

‘Double Trojan Horse’ Drug Tricks Bacteria into Committing Suicide

Bacteria come in two very broad categories based on the structure of their cell walls, the outer region that gives the cells shape and integrity. The cell walls of Gram-positive bacteria consist of a membrane surrounded by a thick layer of sugar and protein, while the cell walls of Gram-negative bacteria consist of a membrane surrounded by a second membrane. This fundamental anatomical difference has a profound medical implication: The types of antibiotics that can kill Gram-positive bacteria are likely ineffective against Gram-negative bacteria and vice versa.

450,000 Women Missed Breast Cancer Screenings Due to “Algorithm Failure”

Major depression on the rise among everyone, new data shows

Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

Google: Deep Learning for Electronic Health Records

When patients get admitted to a hospital, they have many questions about what will happen next. When will I be able to go home? Will I get better?

Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again

Tick-borne diseases have been ‘steadily going up every year … as the diseases expand to new areas around the country,’ Lyle Peterson of the CDC told reporters in a recent conference call announcing the updated infection estimates. Lyme disease accounts for about 80 percent of the tick-borne illnesses in the U.S.

Treadmills Were Meant to Be Atonement Machines

If you are one of the 51.8 million people in the U.S. who use a treadmill for exercise, you know there’s much pain for your muscle-and-fitness gain. On your next 30-minute jog, as you count down the final seconds, ponder whether the hard work made you a better person. Consider whether the workout would feel different if you had powered something, even a fan to cool yourself off.

A lightning strike shut off a woman’s brain implant

DBS devices, such as the woman’s, are increasingly used to help treat neurological conditionslikeParkinson’s, tremors, muscle spasms, epilepsy, and obsessive compulsive disorders. The devices work by placing electrodes in specific areas of the brain to deliver electrical impulses that are thought to help regulate aberrant electrical signals there—although it’s still unclear how exactly this works. The devices’ electrical impulses are generated by a pacemaker-like pulse generator implanted in the chest or torso, connected by wiring and powered by a battery.

Massive E. coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce turns deadly

Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

Last night the group said the increasing rate of tumours in the frontal temporal lobe “raises the suspicion that mobile and cordless phone use may be promoting gliomas”. Professor Denis Henshawsaid: “Our findings illustrate the need to look more carefully at, and to try and explain the mechanisms behind, these cancer trends, instead of brushing the causal factors under the carpet and focusing only on cures.” In 2015 the European Commission Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks concluded that, overall, the epidemiologic studies on cell phone radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation exposure do not show an increased risk of brain tumors or of other cancers of the head and neck region.

Woman receives $5,751 ER bill—for an ice pack and a bandage

Computers Match Accuracy of Radiologists in Screening for Breast Cancer Risk

You are probably not getting enough sleep, and it is killing you

Blue light like that from smartphones linked to some cancers, study finds

Doctors have reversed an inherited disorder in utero using a biotech drug

New form of DNA discovered inside living human cells

A newDNAstructure inside human cells known asthe “i-motif”, has been identified by scientists. This form resembles a twisted “knot” of DNA, instead of the well-known double helix first described by James Watson and Francis Crick.

How Many Genes Do Cells Need? Maybe Almost All of Them

Artificial antimicrobial peptides could help overcome drug-resistant bacteria

Researchers at MIT and the Catholic University of Brasilia have now developed a streamlined approach to developing artificial antimicrobial peptides. Their strategy, which relies on a computer algorithm that mimics the natural process of evolution, has yielded one potential drug candidate that successfully killed bacteria in mice.

Doctors tried to lower $148K cancer drug cost; makers triple price of pill

FDA clears first contact lens with light-adaptive technology

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today cleared the first contact lens to incorporate an additive that automatically darkens the lens when exposed to bright light. The Acuvue Oasys Contact Lenses with Transitions Light Intelligent Technology are soft contact lenses indicated for daily use to correct the vision of people with non-diseased eyes who are nearsighted (myopia) or farsighted (hyperopia). They can be used by people with certain degrees of astigmatism, an abnormal curvature of the eye.

An Augmented Reality Microscope for Cancer Detection

Applications of deep learning to medical disciplines including ophthalmology, dermatology, radiology, and pathology have recently shown great promise to increase both the accuracy and availability of high-quality healthcare to patients around the world. At Google, we have also published results showing that a convolutional neural network is able to detect breast cancer metastases in lymph nodes at a level of accuracy comparable to a trained pathologist. However, because direct tissue visualization using a compound light microscope remains the predominant means by which a pathologist diagnoses illness, a critical barrier to the widespread adoption of deep learning in pathology is the dependence on having a digital representation of the microscopic tissue.

Blowing in the wind: Plutonium at former nuclear weapons site

Researchers find genetic cause for Alzheimer’s, possible method to reverse it

Peptide-based biogenic dental product may cure cavities

Researchers at the University of Washington have designed a convenient and natural product that uses proteins to rebuild tooth enamel and treat dental cavities.

FDA permits marketing of artificial intelligence-based device to detect certain diabetes

Curing disease not a “sustainable business model,” Goldman Sachs analysts say

Non-profit’s $300 hepatitis C cure as effective as $84,000 alternative

The FDA Won’t Let These Farmers Call Their Skim Milk ‘Skim Milk’

What Is Meat? Missouri Is Working to Legislate Against Lab-Grown Alternatives

Alzheimer’s gene neutralised in human brain cells for the first time

Bathroom hand-dryers suck in poo-particles and aerosolize them all over you and everything else

CRISPR’d Food, Coming Soon To A Supermarket Near You

For years now, the US Department of Agriculture has been flirting with the latest and greatest DNA manipulation technologies. Since 2016, it has given free passes to at least a dozen gene-edited crops, ruling that they fall outside its regulatory purview. But on Wednesday, March 28, the agency made its relationship status official; effective immediately, certain gene-edited plants can be designed, cultivated, and sold free from regulation.

The disinformation campaign–and massive radiation increase–behind the 5G rollout

The Internet of Things will require augmenting today’s 4G technology with 5G, thus “massively increasing” the general population’s exposure to radiation, according to a petition signed by 236 scientists worldwide who have published more than 2,000 peer-reviewed studies and represent “a significant portion of the credentialed scientists in the radiation research field,” according to Joel Moskowitz, the director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California, Berkeley, who helped circulate the petition. Nevertheless, like cell phones, 5G technology is on the verge of being introduced without pre-market safety testing.

Do stem cells for vision loss offer real hope?

A new paperin this area generated some buzz on top of an earlier recent pub (mentioned in this post) just a week or so ago about the potential of stem cells for vision loss.

How Famine Under the Nazis Revealed the Cause of Celiac Disease

Older Americans Are Hooked on Vitamins Despite Scarce Evidence They Work

“Nightmare” superbugs continue to lurk in US, but control efforts working

Time to talk about why so many postgrads have poor mental health

First clear evidence cell phone radiation can cause cancer in rats

Project Clara: NVIDIA Supercomputing Platform Redefines Medical Imaging

NVIDIA’s Project Clara, a medical imaging supercomputer, renews the capabilities of these machines in place. Unveiled this week at the GPU Technology Conference, in Silicon Valley, Project Clara takes advantage of incredible advancements in computation.

Nicotinomide riboside effects on aging similar to caloric restriction

Scientists have long known that restricting calories can fend off physiological signs of aging, with studies in fruit flies, roundworms, rodents and even people showing that chronically slashing intake by about a third can reap myriad health benefits and, in some cases, extend lifespan.

Coffee sold in California must carry cancer warning, judge rules

Chemotherapy-free ‘cancer vaccine’ moves from mice to human trials at Stanford

Newly-discovered human organ may help explain how cancer spreads

This discovery was made by chance, from routine endoscopies – a procedure that involves inserting a thin camera into a person’s gastrointestinal tract. Newer approaches enable doctors to use this procedure to get a microscopic look at the tissue inside a person’s gut at the same time, with some surprising results.

AI Cardiologist Aces Its First Medical Exam

When both the AI and expert cardiologists were asked to classify the images, the AI achieved an accuracy of 92 percent. The humans got only 79 percent correct.

Where Fat Goes When You Lose Weight

Some respondents thought fat turns into muscle, which is impossible, and others assumed it escapes via the colon. Only three of our respondents gave the right answer, which means 98% of the health professionals in our survey could not explain how weight loss works.

Breakthrough study reveals how LSD dissolves a person’s sense of self

World’s Largest Animal Study on Cell Tower Radiation Confirms Cancer Link

The Workplace Is Killing People and Nobody Cares

It’s true. He takes three points and puts them together. The first point, which is consistent with data reported by the World Economic Forum and other sources, is that an enormous percentage of the health care cost burden in the developed world, and in particular in the U.S., comes from chronic disease — things like diabetes and cardiovascular and circulatory disease.

Nanofibers Dramatically Improve Wound Healing and Tissue Regeneration

The discovery that wounds in the fetus can heal without scarring has prompted scientists to work on designing new biomaterials based on the properties of the fetal skin as promising regenerative strategies.

Scientists suspect a link between the digestive system and problems with sleep

How a Virus Spreads Through an Airplane Cabin

Traveling by plane greatly increases our chances of getting sick, or so many of us are wont to believe. To be fair, it’s not uncommon to come down with a nasty illness after we return from a vacation or business trip. But is flying the culprit?

Virus fished from pond cures man’s deadly antibiotic-resistant infection

The doctor spent the next four years battling the infection, slipping in and out of the hospital. His surgeons and doctors at Yale deemed him too high risk for another operation and put him on mega-doses of antibiotics, prescribed indefinitely. The drugs couldn’t clear the infection, they merely knocked it back enough to keep it from killing him.

Macular degeneration: ‘I’ve been given my sight back’

Doctors have taken a major step towards curing the most common form of blindness in the UK – age-related macular degeneration.

Decoding Parkinson’s: Scientists Aim to Put All the Clues on One Map

Tech’s Next Big Wave: Big Data Meets Biology

The quest to retrieve, analyze, and leverage that data has become the new gold rush. And a vanguard of tech titans—not to mention a bevy of hot startups—are on the hunt for it.

Lead is even more dangerous than previously realized

Looking back, it seems insane. Bluntly put, we took a known poison and – for three quarters of a century – used it in machines that puffed it out in breathable form. Then we drove them millions of miles a day, all over the world, regularly dosing billions of people with the toxin.

The Blood Unicorn Theranos Was Just a Fairy Tale

It has been pretty obvious for a few years now that Theranos Inc. was a huge fraud. Theranos is a blood-testing startup that developed devices, which it called ‘TSPUs’ and ‘miniLabs,’ that were supposed to be able to do a wide range of laboratory tests on a finger-prick blood sample. It seems like Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes really wanted to build devices that would actually do these things, and thought she could, and tried to.

Top bottled water brands are contaminated with plastic particles, study finds

Autism’s social deficits in animal model are reversed by an anti-cancer drug

The Next Big Thing in Aging? A “Hit-And-Run” Approach to Killing Harmful Cells

Contact lenses that deliver drugs directly to the eye win health care prize

Deadly superbug just got scarier – it can mysteriously thwart last-resort drug

Australia could become first country to eradicate cervical cancer

HPV (human papillomavirus) is a sexually transmitted infection that causes 99.9% of cervical cancers. In 2007, the federal government began providing the vaccine for free to girls aged 12-13 years, and in 2013, it extended the program to boys.

The virus hunter: In a bygone era, C.J. Peters learned how to bend the rules

Timothy Lu seeks to combat disease by reprogramming biological systems

He’s not just saying he feels her pain—he really is

DNA nanobot ‘starves’ tumors

A DNA nanorobot programmed to transport blood-coagulating proteins specifically into tumours so that their blood supply is blocked could make for a promising new cancer therapeutic. The new system, which literally “starves” the tumour, only destroys cancer cells and not surrounding tissue. It has been shown to work on breast, lung, melanoma and ovarian tumours in mice and Bama miniature pigs.

Fiber Is Good for You. Now Scientists May Know Why

Humanizing Medicine with AI – Enabling Docs to Speak with Their Patients

Diabetes is actually five separate diseases, research suggests

Scandinavian researchers say a new classification would mean better treatment for patients.

Forecasts of genetic fate just got a lot more accurate