Article • Plaques

Identifying a likely heart attack

UK researchers have identified a new approach, which could make it easier to identify fatty plaques that could cause heart attacks or a stroke.

Article • Early warning

Blood test detects early Alzheimer’s

The cause of Alzheimer’s disease remains unknown. Early diagnosis is currently not possible as clinical symptoms only occur once a large number of neurones in the brain have already been destroyed. There is no treatment available either.

Article • Automated tasks

Fast, efficient, cheaper microbiology diagnostics

A fully automated clinical microbiology laboratory system went into service at Heidelberg University Hospital this April. Produced by medical technology firm BD Life Science, this first installation at a German university hospital will play a major role in a study exploring the potential benefits of lab automation in containing the spread of pathogens in a hospital.

Article • Difficult foe

Clostridium difficile: Fresh insight into an old pathogen

Hospital-acquired Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is on the rise. Symptoms range from non-typical mild diarrhoea that can develop into pseudomembranous colitis up to a toxic megacolon, which often leads to death.

Sponsored • IT

LabCentre - agility and accuracy for all disciplines

Laboratories are an essential part of effective modern healthcare. They provide clinicians with vital information that helps them make life-saving decisions, diagnose conditions and monitor patient treatment.

News • Bacteria

New discovery could change ICU care

No one knows for sure how they got there. But the discovery that bacteria that normally live in the gut can be detected in the lungs of critically ill people and animals could mean a lot for intensive care patients.

News • Fight inflammation

Stem cells engineered to grow cartilage

With a goal of treating worn, arthritic hips without extensive surgery to replace them, scientists have programmed stem cells to grow new cartilage on a 3-D template shaped like the ball of a hip joint. What’s more, using gene therapy, they have activated the new cartilage to release anti-inflammatory molecules to fend off a return of arthritis. The technique was demonstrated in a collaborative…

News • BRIM

Technology helps ID aggressive early breast cancer

When a woman is diagnosed with the earliest stage of breast cancer, how aggressive should her treatment be? Will the non-invasive cancer become invasive? Or is it a slow-growing variety that will likely never be harmful? Researchers at the University of Michigan developed a new technology that can identify aggressive forms of ductal carcinoma in situ, or stage 0 breast cancer, from non-aggressive…

News • Breast cancer

Artificial intelligence diagnoses with high accuracy

Pathologists have been largely diagnosing disease the same way for the past 100 years, by manually reviewing images under a microscope. But new work suggests that computers can help doctors improve accuracy and significantly change the way cancer and other diseases are diagnosed. A research team from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) recently developed…

Protein fragment could provide a defense when antibiotics fail

Bacterial infections that don't respond to antibiotics are of rising concern, as is sepsis - the immune system's last-ditch, failed attack on infection that ends up being lethal itself. Reporting online in "Nature", researchers at Boston Children's Hospital describe new potential avenues for controlling both sepsis and the runaway bacterial infections that provoke it.

Microfluidic device tests effects of electric fields on cancer cells

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology research center in Singapore have developed a new microfluidic device that tests the effects of electric fields on cancer cells. They observed that a range of low-intensity, middle-frequency electric fields effectively stopped breast and lung cancer cells from growing and spreading, while having no adverse effect on neighboring healthy cells.

News • Herpes zoster

Shingles doubles stroke risk for several years

The study by researchers from the Department of Neurology at the University of Ulsan College of Medicine in Seoul showed that herpes zoster infection not only raised the risk of ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke but also that of a transient ischaemic attack (TIA), a warning mini-stroke often preceding a full-blown stroke.

Article • Disaster areas

Winners on the firing line

Jens Hahn MD is an Internal Medicine and Intensive Care Specialist who works with the international, independent, medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF in English: Doctors Without Borders). Here he describes his work in Afghanistan and South Sudan, and the use of rapid diagnostic tests in the field.

News • Dividing T cells

Target for improving cancer immunotherapy

When an immune T cell divides into two daughter cells, the activity of an enzyme called mTORC1, which controls protein production, splits unevenly between the progeny, producing two cells with different properties. Such "asymmetric division," uncovered by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers using lab-grown cells and specially bred mice, could offer new ways to enhance cancer…

News • Infections

Conference to help accelerate the development of new antimicrobials

The European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) and the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) are jointly organizing a conference in Vienna from 21 – 23 September 2016 to help researchers accelerate the development of new antimicrobials for drug-resistant infections.

Article • Epidemic

Ebola leaves a health legacy

First the good news: the most severe Ebola outbreak ever has been contained. Last December, Guinea, where the first infection was reported in late 2013, was declared free of Ebola cases. Liberia was considered free of Ebola in mid-January after no new case had been reported for 42 days (the WHO criterion for ‘free of Ebola’).

Article • Politics

Medics urged to organise refugee screening

Thousands upon thousands of humans have taken and are continuing to take flight from wars, persecution and economic stress, seeking the chance of survival in European and other countries. They arrive not only physically exhausted, but also in mourning for those killed in their own countries, or during hellish journeys – therefore many also suffer unimaginable mental traumas. Clearly they need…

News • Individual treatment

Molecular sub-groups in early stages of bladder cancer

Bladder cancer is a frequent disease affecting approximately 1,900 persons in Denmark annually. A high number of these patients only have superficial tumours in the bladder when the disease is diagnosed. For many years, this patient group will be examined frequently and during this time many get new tumours; some cases develop aggressively making it necessary to remove the bladder or receive…

News • JIB/ANCBH 2016

Agfa HealthCare showcases its laboratory information system HEXALIS

Bioserveur/Mesanalyses.fr connects 1,400 laboratories, 130 healthcare facilities and 15,000 doctors for sharing information.

News • Virology

Tricks of ticking time bomb Hepatitis B virus

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) causes hepatitis B, an infectious disease that afflicts 230 million people worldwide, thereof 440 000 in Germany. Persistence of the virus in liver cells leads to progressive organ damage in the patient and contributes to a high risk of cirrhosis and liver cancer development. Providing a new paradigm to hepatitis B understanding, researchers at the German Cancer Research…

News • Politics

Liquid biopsy test from Roche gets FDA approval

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the cobas EGFR Mutation Test v2, a blood-based companion diagnostic for the cancer drug Tarceva (erlotinib). This is the first FDA-approved, blood-based genetic test that can detect epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene mutations in non-small cell lung cancer patients. Such mutations are present in approximately 10-20 percent of non-small cell…

News • Endothelial progenitor cells

Growing blood vessels could boost regenerative medicine

In addition the technique to grow the blood vessels in a 3D scaffold cuts down on the risk of transplant rejection because it uses cells from the patient. It was developed by researchers from the University of Bath's Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, working with colleagues at Bristol Heart Institute.

More light on cancer

The group of Russian and French researchers, with the participation of scientists from the Lomonosov Moscow State University, has succeeded to synthesize nanoparticles of ultrapure silicon, which exhibited the property of efficient photoluminescence, i.e., secondary light emission after photoexcitation. These particles were able to easily penetrate into cancer cells and it allowed to use them as…

Sponsored • Lab workflow

Quietly complaining about your current QC?

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News • Experts

Europe needs to be prepared for Zika virus epidemic

The Zika epidemic has long assumed global proportions, experts told the Congress of the European Academy of Neurology in Copenhagen. Europe needs to get prepared to deal with the relentless spread of the health threat, in particular with a view to “imported” infection. Awareness for prevention and personal protection is important, in particular with thousands of athletes and fans soon…