454 Life Sciences, a Roche company, announced that a team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have characterized the human gut microbiome by sequencing the microbial communities of adult twins and their mothers with the Genome Sequencer FLX System.
With the acquisition of Ventara Medical Systems, Roche hopes to move several steps further forward in their goal for personalised medicine that improves diagnostics and ultimately, clinical outcomes.
PCR plays a major part in medical diagnostics. From a few drops of blood, a tissue sample or a bacterial colony will be sufficient to confirm the presence of specific DNA. This approach relies, however, on a prior understanding of the mechanisms underlying the condition e.g. the causative organism in a viral disease. Standard primers are currently available for many pathogenic organisms which is…
Medical products have to fulfil exacting requirements. That is why surface properties are increasingly analysed with optical 3D measurement systems.
Is there a case of drug abuse ore not? In case of an emergency physicians need a quick answer to decide about the further treatment. The Dräger DrugTest 5000 could deliver the information of up to six different drug classes within minutes.
Advanced TC™ cell culture products have an innovative polymer modification which forms a special surface that optimises cultivation of fastidious cells and facilitates complex experimental approaches.
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.
