Medical innovations are rapidly expanding therapy options for many diseases. Keep reading to find more information on new therapies, surgical techniques, effective medication and patient care.
The World Health Organisation's (WHO) Essential Medicines List and List of Essential Diagnostics are core guidance documents that help countries prioritize critical health products that should be widely available and affordable throughout health systems. Now, updated versions of the two lists have been published, focusing on cancer and other global health challenges, with an emphasis on effective…
Nurses’ knowledge of cancer and screening processes varies significantly across the globe – potentially resulting in unnecessary deaths where knowledge falls short – new research reports. In the first study of its kind, which was now published in the European Journal of Oncology Nursing, researchers from the University of Surrey investigated nurses’ awareness of cancer warning signs,…
For patients with Type 1 diabetes who don’t respond well to insulin or have other serious medical complications caused by their disease, pancreas transplantation offers hope for a cure. But obese candidates who need a pancreas transplant often are denied the procedure because of poor outcomes, including high rates of incision infections, which are linked to an increased risk for failure and…
IBA (Ion Beam Applications S.A.) announces the launch of myQA iON at the 2019 PTCOG conference. myQA iON significantly reduces the time needed for patient QA: The use of PT machine log files, process automation, task-based workflows, and the latest web technologies significantly increase QA efficiency while ensuring patient treatment safety. Compared to conventional detector measurements (at…
We all know someone affected by the battle against cancer. And we know that treatments can be quite efficient at shrinking the tumor but too often, they can’t kill all the cells, and so it may come back. With some aggressive types of cancer, the problem is so great that there is very little that can be done for the patients.
A new targeted therapy using non-thermal radio waves has been shown to block the growth of liver cancer cells anywhere in the body without damaging healthy cells, according to a study conducted by scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest Baptist Health.
A team of specialists at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital and UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh have performed UPMC's first in-utero surgery to close an open neural tube defect in a baby months before her birth.
A proof-of-principle study shows that gold nanoparticles loaded with CRISPR and other gene-editing tools safely and effectively edited blood stem cells.
Virtual reality (VR) can identify early Alzheimer’s disease more accurately than ‘gold standard’ cognitive tests currently in use, suggests new research from the University of Cambridge. The study highlights the potential of new technologies to help diagnose and monitor conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, which affects more than 525,000 people in the UK. In 2014, Professor John…
In a new study, researchers from King’s College London have shown how skin vaccination can generate protective CD8 T-cells that are recruited to the genital tissues and could be used as a vaccination strategy for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). One of the challenges in developing vaccines for STIs, such as HIV or herpes simplex virus, is understanding how to attract specialised immune…
Imperial medical students have helped to devise a new type of ‘decoy’ drug to tackle infections that are resistant to antibiotics. In lab tests on bacterial cultures, the new drug successfully killed a strain of drug-resistant bacteria. It works by delivering two antibiotics, one of which is effectively hidden. When the bacteria fight against the first ‘decoy’ antibiotic, this action…
A novel imaging technique that uses a synthesized form of scorpion venom to light up brain tumors has shown promise in a clinical trial. The imaging system enables neurosurgeons to better see malignant growths that often are difficult to fully eliminate.
Researchers from King's College London have found that therapy that can induce heart cells to regenerate after a heart attack.
In October 2016, Xenios became a part of Fresenius Medical Care (FME), the world’s leading provider of products and services for people with chronic kidney failure. The integration of the expertise from FME and Xenios and thus the combination of the companies’ competences strongly enhances treatment options in critical care within the intensive care unit (ICU) of hospitals across the world.…
Two millions: this is, worldwide, the number of babies which suffer suffocation during birth every year. A resuscitation procedure is sometimes the key to avert irreparable damages for the baby. And, for successful outcomes, promptness of action and preparation are vital. Researcher Mark Thielen (Industrial Design) from the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) developed a 3D printed baby…
High-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) is the most common and aggressive subtype of ovarian cancer. The HGSOC tumors consist of several heterogeneous cell populations with a large number of mutations. This genetic variability makes it difficult to find drugs that would kill all the cancer cells, and to which the cells would not become resistant during treatment. Over half of the patients…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Vyndaqel (tafamidis meglumine) and Vyndamax (tafamidis) capsules for the treatment of the heart disease (cardiomyopathy) caused by transthyretin mediated amyloidosis (ATTR-CM) in adults. These are the first FDA-approved treatments for ATTR-CM. Vyndaqel and Vyndamax have the same active moiety, tafamidis, but they are not substitutable on a…
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found, in mice, that treatment with an antibiotic reduces the size of lesions caused by endometriosis. The researchers are planning a large, multicenter clinical trial to test the drug metronidazole in women who have the painful condition. The study is published online April 30 in the journal Human Reproduction.…
For the first time ever, chronic pain will be classified as a diagnosis in line with other diseases when the World Health Organization (WHO) approves the next catalogue of recognised diseases in May. According to Professor Peter Svensson from the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health, this is very significant for the approx. 20% of the population who suffer from chronic pain. Working with top…
IBA (Ion Beam Applications S.A.), the world’s leading provider of proton therapy solutions and radiation therapy integrated quality assurance (QA) for the treatment of cancer, announced at the ESTRO 38 congress, that it has reached the milestone of 1,500 myQA customers worldwide. Since the first release of myQA in 2015, IBA has rapidly expanded its customer base across the global radiation…
A single high dose of radiation that can be delivered directly to the tumour within a few minutes is a safe and effective technique for treating men with low risk prostate cancer, according to a study presented at the ESTRO 38 conference. Radiotherapy traditionally involves a series of lower dose treatments that take place over several days or week. The new treatment is called high dose-rate…
New findings about a fatal form of blood cancer could aid the development of new drugs with significantly less harmful side effects than existing chemotherapy. The discovery could lead to novel treatments that efficiently eliminate blood cancer cells in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), without harming healthy blood cells. Researchers have discovered how a protein in the body plays a key role in AML…
Women with early, low risk, hormone-driven breast cancer are less likely to have a recurrence of their disease if they have radiotherapy after surgery, as well as anti-hormone treatment, according to results from a trial that has followed 869 women for ten years. New findings from the 8 A trial of the Austrian Breast and Colorectal Cancer Study Group (ABCSG), presented at the ESTRO 38 conference,…
Today, on the occasion of the international DNA day, imec, a world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, and its partners revealed their Genome Analytics Platform (GAP) platform, a unique platform that can perform a full genome analysis of 48 samples in only 48 hours and at an acceptable cost. The platform paves the way to genome sequencing as a daily…
Medical physicists at the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Dresden (Germany) announce the beginning of a new era in treatment planning: In a worldwide first, a new approach increases the accuracy, safety and probably also the tolerability of proton therapy. The range prediction procedure was developed and extensively validated by medical physicists from the Dresden OncoRay Center, the…
