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New guidelines for the treatment of acromegaly, a serious growth hormone disorder

It’s said a lot can happen in seven days. In seven years, a lot has happened in the understanding of acromegaly, a debilitating condition that causes a patient to have too much growth hormone. It’s seven years since the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists last produced guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of acromegaly. Their 2004 guidelines were just 13 pages long. Their latest, the 2011 guidelines, have grown – to 44 pages.

31 Aug 2011

IMMY, University of Nevada receive FDA clearance for CrAg Lateral Flow Assay

The Food and Drug Administration has cleared a new diagnostic test that will help save the lives of hundreds of thousands of AIDS patients stricken with cryptococcosis, a fungal meningitis.

25 Aug 2011

Johns Hopkins establishes Center for Personalized Cancer Medicine with Commonwealth Foundation gift

A $30 million gift from the Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research has enabled the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center to establish a Center for Personalized Cancer Medicine. The gift from the Richmond, VA- based foundation, will be used to support research and the development of new technologies that pinpoint the novel genetic characteristics of each patient's cancer.

22 Aug 2011

Calcium scores and heart disease risk, experts debate

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22 Aug 2011

Inherited genetic links to prostate cancer discovered

Researchers from the U.S. and Sweden have linked five inherited genetic mutations to the development of a particularly aggressive and deadly form of prostate cancer. They suggest that these findings could someday lead to development of an easy-to-administer blood test to screen for such mutations to help physicians assess the long-term risk faced by newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients.

17 Aug 2011

Researchers identify five SNPs linked with aggressive, lethal prostate cancer

An international team of researchers led by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has identified five inherited genetic variants that are strongly associated with aggressive, lethal prostate cancer.

17 Aug 2011

Blood test early in pregnancy to detect baby’s gender

While carrying the child, a mother's blood has cell-free fetal DNA floating around in it, and it's possible to use this to test for the baby's sex. In a meta-analysis that covered more, the test was found to be 95% efficient in guessing the sex of the fetus — and it works from as early as seven weeks. As the fetus and the placenta develop, the amount of DNA present in the mother increases, boosting the accuracy of the test, which hits its peak at 20 weeks.

12 Aug 2011

Biomarker may signal whether common back pain treatment will work

A new study from researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine has identified a unique protein complex that can be used to predict whether an epidural steroid injection will help relieve pain caused by a herniated disc in the lower spine.

10 Aug 2011

Pink or blue – now find out at 7 weeks of pregnancy

Now a simple blood test can determine a baby’s sex as early as seven weeks into pregnancy and is highly accurate if used correctly. Experts believe this will have a great impact on parents concerned about gender-linked diseases and those who are merely curious, as well as people considering the more ethically controversial step of selecting the sex of their children.

10 Aug 2011

Patients receive inadequate medical monitoring for prescribed drugs in psychiatric settings

New research from the University of Leicester demonstrates that psychiatrists are not offering adequate checks for metabolic complications that are common in patients with mental ill health - especially those prescribed antipsychotic medication.

10 Aug 2011

New study supports DNA-based 'biomarker' blood test for prostate cancer screening

A new study supports the use of a DNA-based "biomarker" blood test as a complement to the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test currently offered to screen men for prostate cancer. University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers report their findings online ahead of print in the British Journal of Cancer.

8 Aug 2011

New HIV numbers stable at 50,000 per year, down from 130,000 in the mid-1980s

According to government figures released Wednesday, the number of Americans newly infected with the AIDS virus each year has been holding steady at about 50,000. But a U.S. health official said just keeping the number stable was unacceptable, noting a dramatic increase in new HIV cases among young gay and bisexual black men.

5 Aug 2011

Researchers discover new tick-borne bacterium that causes ehrlichiosis in Wis., Minn.

A new tick-borne bacterium infecting humans with ehrlichiosis has been discovered in Wisconsin and Minnesota. It was identified as a new strain of bacteria through DNA testing conducted at Mayo Clinic.

4 Aug 2011

Accurate, non-invasive and inexpensive test can detect Alzheimer's

Scientists from Durin Technologies, Inc., and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)-School of Osteopathic Medicine have developed a blood test that uses human protein microarrays to detect the presence of specific antibodies in the blood that can be used to diagnose Alzheimer's disease with unprecedented accuracy.

4 Aug 2011

Novel therapy reduces elevated blood levels of toxic protein in women with preeclampsia

A novel therapy that reduces elevated blood levels of a potentially toxic protein in women with preeclampsia, a dangerous complication of pregnancy, may someday address the therapeutic dilemma posed by the condition - balancing life-threatening risks to the mother with the dangers that early delivery poses to an immature fetus.

3 Aug 2011

New investment to strengthen Clearbridge Accelerator's incubation platform

Clearbridge Accelerator announced today that it has received an investment from Tim Draper, a well-established venture capitalist based in the Silicon Valley.

2 Aug 2011

'Systems biology' study of breast cancer

Using a "systems biology" approach - which focuses on understanding the complex relationships between biological systems - to look under the hood of an aggressive form of breast cancer, researchers for the first time have identified a set of proteins in the blood that change in abundance long before the cancer is clinically detectable.

29 Jul 2011

Patients with diabetes, depression more likely to develop serious eye disease

Patients with diabetes who also suffer from depression are more likely to develop a serious complication known as diabetic retinopathy, a disease that damages the eye's retina, a five-year study finds.

29 Jul 2011

Volunteers needed in worldwide study to help people breathe easier

Australian sufferers of chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), one of the most important causes of breathlessness and difficulty performing tasks of normal daily life, have the opportunity to participate in a worldwide study, starting this month, assessing a potential new treatment.

26 Jul 2011

WHO warns against blood test kits for tuberculosis

According to a World Health Organization (WHO) warning Sunday, the widely used blood tests to detect tuberculosis (TB) are “dangerous” to patients because they are unreliable and can produce incorrect results. The WHO announced that it will issue an unprecedented recommendation against using such tests for the infectious lung disease that affects some 14 million people worldwide. As much as a third of the world's population is thought to harbor the bacteria that cause TB.

21 Jul 2011