The US diabetes epidemic
There's little evidence that newer, more expensive drugs work any better than older, cheaper medications. Diabetes, which came 7th in the list of the USA's top mortality causes in 2006, has hit a new high.
There's little evidence that newer, more expensive drugs work any better than older, cheaper medications. Diabetes, which came 7th in the list of the USA's top mortality causes in 2006, has hit a new high.
The results of the recent Multi-Centre Celiac Serology Study undertaken to define the optimal serological screening approach to Celiac Disease clearly showed that dual or combined isotype (IgA+IgG) transglutaminase screening can be advocated as a sensitive and specific alternative to endomysial antibody testing in the assessment of Celiac Disease.
AFFiRiS GmbH has granted GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals S.A. (GSK) exclusive rights to develop and commercialise its Alzheimer's disease vaccine candidates. Two are currently in Phase I clinical development, and others are in preclinical development.
Diabetes presents a special challenge for the young. Here we see how a young Swiss girl has successfully come to terms with her metabolic disorder. A true life story from Bayer HealthCare Diabetes Care (BayNews)
A new lab-on-chip system, the ivD-platform, which quickly determines, on site, the contents and parameters of biological samples, such as blood or saliva, with the help of immunoassay or DNA analysis, was presented at Biotechnica this autumn.
The US firm Inverness Medical has launched a new rapid test as an in vitro diagnostic aid for Clostridium difficile associated disease (CDAD).
Olympus is presenting the AU480, the newest member of its clinical chemistry analyser family. With a throughput of up to 800 tests per hour, an ISE module and on board capacity of 63 different analytes, the Olympus AU480 is the ideal main analyser for small to medium-size laboratories.
The vital, routine task of plate streaking to isolate a pure culture is inefficient and time-consuming, significantly slowing microbiologists' responses.
The machine 'qViro' which is the size of a coffee grinder will make virus counting much cheaper than traditional virus counting technology. The revolutionary new invention offers the potential to quickly muster and count the number of viruses in a sample in minutes - it is a portable, desktop instrument, powered from the USB drive of a computer - current competitors are the size of washing…
Advances in the treatment of cartilage injuries to the knee are very noteworthy. The decisive breakthrough must have been the development of the self-resorbing, bilayer collagen membrane (Chondro-Gide) by Geistlich in Switzerland.
Olympus will present the latest member of its clinical chemistry analyser family at Medica.
Siemens new Clinitek Micro-albumin 9 Urinalysis Strip is now available in Europe. The strips, which can be used on the firm's Clinitek Status analyser, or the Clinitek Advantus analyser, provide nine tests to detect and monitor kidney disease.
The French firm bioMérieux and ProteoSys, based in Mainz, Germany, have signed a license and development agreement for Annexin 3 to be used to develop a urine-based, confirmatory diagnostic test for prostate cancer.
Injections, that's everyday business for the men and women working in healthcare. As long as it is the patients who have to face the needle, it seems. Like in the years before Dr Heinzpeter Moecke, medical director of Asklepios Klinik Nord-Heidberg in Hamburg, Germany, set an example for his staff and had a vaccination.
GenoType® MTBDR plus, a new molecular test for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis has recently been approved in Europe. The test, developed by the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) and Hain Lifescience, offers a fast solution to detect MDR-TB and XDR-TB at a reasonable price, a good condition for the application in poorer countries.
Good news for diabetes patients in the UK: According to a report published recently by the Department of Health, diabetes care in the NHS is improving and focusing more on prevention. The result: More patients have been identified, and in more people at risk development of the condition could be prevented.
The Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) recently published new guidelines which offer methods to assess test performance when formal proficiency testing programs are not available. Proficiency testing is an important part of quality management in the clinical laboratory and complements internal quality control to help ensure patient test results are valid.
Bayer HealthCare Diabetes Care unveiled the new CONTOUR® blood glucose meter with enhanced testing features at the 44th Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Rome, Italy.
Last week the English government closed its consultation on the effectiveness of vascular checks for high-risk people aged 40-74. Would this help? Experts from New Zealand and the WHO say "yes". Others argue that public health approaches targeting the whole population are both: cheaper and more effective than tablets.
Vulvar cancer is the fourth most common cancer of the female genital tract. In 2008, roughly 3,460 cases of vulvar cancer will be diagnosed in the United States and about 870 will die of this cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.
Two Dutch studies indicate that especially somatic and incident depressions are associated with poor prognosis in cardiac patients, which is very different from the 'typical' psychiatric depression that is usually characterised by cognitive and recurrent depressive symtoms.
Professor C Mueller adressed the issue of new biomarkers in acute cardiac care on the ESC on Monday, 1st September. Read his comment in the following.
In the next 10-20 years, great changes will occur in the field of laboratory medicine.
During the XVII International AIDS Conference held in Mexico City this August, keynote speakers from Europe, Latin America and Africa addressed issues including the importance of early detection of HIV infection, the relevance of rapid testing for epidemiology studies, the use of Dried Blood Spots for routine viral-load testing in remote areas, and the experience of South Africa in routine…