Novel blood test to detect sleep deprivation

Sleep deprivation can also leads to lack of concentration, followed by accidents. Lack of sleep is equally as dangerous as the excessive drinking. It is easier to estimate the level of alcohol intoxication. But is there any instrument or test to predict the level of tiredness due to sleep deprivation?

Recently, the scientists from the Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom have developed a blood test to predict the sleep deprivation level. This 92 percent accurate prototypical test led by Prof. Derk-Jan Dijk, has been published in the journal named Sleep.

The research team found that the expression of around 68 genes got affected due to lack of enough sleep, by experimenting on the blood sample of 36 participants who skipped one night sleep. Hence, the biomarkers of sleep deprivation can be evaluated with the help of this blood test.

Professor Simon Archer, the co-author of this study, said "The very existence of such biomarkers in the blood after only a period of 24-hour wakefulness shows the physiological impact a lack of sleep can have on our body."

Prof. Derk-Jan Dijk said, "This is a test for acute [1 night's] total sleep loss; the next step is to identify biomarkers for chronic insufficient sleep, which we know to be associated with adverse health outcomes."

The post Novel blood test to detect sleep deprivation appeared first on Drugdu.com

from Drugdu  https://goo.gl/QgQoHk

New Biomarker to Prevent Severe Bouts of Low Blood Sugar in Diabetics

A new biomarker might possibly furnish new clues required to develop a diagnostic tool for hypoglycemia-associated autonomic failure (HAAF), an LSU Pennington Biomedical Research Center study found. There is no current objective diagnostic device for this life-threatening condition, if unchecked.

"There is currently no objective way for a health care provider to measure whether a patient has experienced repeated episodes of low blood sugar and therefore may be suffering from HAAF," said David McDougal, Ph.D., assistant professor-research and head of Pennington Biomedical's Neurobiology of Metabolic Dysfunction Laboratory.

Researchers at LSU Pennington Biomedical aimed to find ways via which biomedical imaging could present new solutions that enable measurement of occurrence of glucose level collapse. Instead of looking at glucose uptake in the directly in the brain, they focused on the adaptation of the brain after an incidence of crashed glucose levels.

The brain adapts by heightening the rate at which it utilizes other energy sources, like acetate, when glucose is not available.

"The results of our study suggest that this adaptation may still be present after exposure to times of low blood sugar and therefore can be used to measure how frequently a person experiences low blood sugar," McDougal said. "We believe that by measuring how well a person's brain uses acetate, we might one day be able to determine if they are suffering from HAAF or are at increased risk for developing the condition in the near future."

This would enable doctors to offer treatment for decreasing this risk by altering the medication the person is on or recommending the use of a glucose monitoring device, McDougal said.

He remarks that "more studies will have to be conducted in order to demonstrate if this biomarker can be of practical clinical use." He has applied for a provisional patent for his breakthrough.

The post New Biomarker to Prevent Severe Bouts of Low Blood Sugar in Diabetics appeared first on Drugdu.com

Quick Analysis of Hundreds of Proteins from a Single Blood Sample

Scientists from McGill University have developed a novel technology to quickly analyze hundreds of proteins from a single blood sample in a cost-effective manner. There are around 20,000 proteins present in our bodies. But till date, only one specific protein can be detected at a time. The proteins act as biomarkers to provide key information about the health condition for both clinicians and scientists.

Milad Dagher, a Ph.D. candidate, Professor David Juncker and their colleagues from McGill's Department of Biomedical Engineering, have developed this method and a section of this work was published in Nature Nanotechnology.

With the help of multicolor fluorescent dyes, micro-beads are barcoded which enables detection of markers in the same solution. The cytometer is a laser instrument which counts the proteins that stick to the beads.

A new algorithm has been developed by the team to enable different colors of micro-beads generated with high accuracy for the improved analysis of proteins.

Milad Dagher said, "Current technologies hold a major trade-off between the number of proteins that can be measured at once and the cost and accuracy of a test; This means that large-scale studies, such as clinical trials, are underpowered because they tend to fall back on tried-and-true platforms with limited capabilities."

Their upcoming work is focused on maintaining precise detection of proteins with increased scale.

The post Quick Analysis of Hundreds of Proteins from a Single Blood Sample appeared first on Drugdu.com

from Drugdu  https://goo.gl/QgQoHk

New Blood Test Foresees Risk for Kidney Cancer and Survival Five Years Before Diagnosis

The most prevalent type of kidney cancer, clear cell kidney cancer, could be predicted years prior to clinical diagnosis by a crucial biomarker of kidney disease. Kidney-injury-molecule-1 (KIM-1) can be identified in urine and blood and usually exists in little quantities in healthy persons.

A new study published in Clinical Cancer Research, headed by BWH investigators, along with colleagues from Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center, evaluates the role of a blood test in detecting elevated amounts of KIM-1 in patients who may develop kidney cancer up to five years in future. Their results reveal that KIM-1 could establish a distinction between those who developed kidney cancer from those who did not.

"Early detection of kidney cancer can be lifesaving. We can cure kidney cancer when we detect it at an early stage, but patients with advanced kidney cancer have a very high death rate," said Venkata Sabbisetti, Ph.D., a research faculty member in the BWH Renal Division. “Our results suggest that with further refinement, KIM-1 has the potential to identify patients with early, curable kidney cancer."

The team noted that supplementing a model with KIM-1 for predicting kidney cancer risk roughly doubled the precision of that model. KIM-1showed significantly higher sensitivity for kidney cancer detection compared to prostate-specific antigen’s sensitivity for prostate cancer.

"We envision that KIM-1 will be useful in settings where the risk of kidney cancer is higher, such as patients undergoing abdominal CT scanning, where KIM-1 could be used to stratify risk of RCC," the authors wrote. "This will be particularly important given the rise of routine CT scans and the strong association between a number of CT scans and number of nephrectomies performed at the regional level in the U.S., indicating a substantial burden of overdiagnosis."

The post New Blood Test Foresees Risk for Kidney Cancer and Survival Five Years Before Diagnosis appeared first on Drugdu.com

from Drugdu  https://goo.gl/QgQoHk

Blood Test to Suggest Best Possible Treatment for Advanced Prostate Cancer

Lawson Health Research Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Royal Marsden and Epic Sciences conducted an international mutual study which discovered a novel blood test that can foresee advanced prostate cancer patient response to particular treatments, resulting in better survival.

A liquid biopsy test introduced by molecular diagnostics company Epic Sciences was used, that evaluates circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in blood collected from patients suffering from advanced prostate cancer who are contemplating a shift from hormone-targeting therapy to chemotherapy. CTCs are cancer cells that depart from a tumor and flow into the bloodstream and penetrate other parts of the body, causing metastasis.

The test looks for a protein called AR-V7 in the cell nucleus of the patient's CTCs. The research team aspired to conclude whether the existence of this protein predicted which treatment would result in maximum prolongation of a patient's life. They discovered that patients who tested positive for the protein gave the best response to taxane-based chemotherapy whereas, those who tested negative responded best to hormone-targeting therapy with androgen-receptor signaling (ARS) inhibitors, the two most commonly used drug classes to manage advanced prostate cancer.

"The study focused on a critical decision point when patients and their oncologists are choosing what therapy to pursue next," says Dr. Alison Allan, a scientist at Lawson and Chair, Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology at Western University's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. "We are addressing a critical unmet need by validating that a blood test or liquid biopsy can be used to select a therapy most likely to extend a patient's life."

The post Blood Test to Suggest Best Possible Treatment for Advanced Prostate Cancer  appeared first on Drugdu.com

from Drugdu  https://goo.gl/QgQoHk

Hidden Blood in Stool Could Predict Fatal Health Conditions

If a drop of blood is seen in stool, people tend to panic. The causative factors could include digestive, respiratory, circulatory, hematological or even neuropsychological diseases.

A fecal occult blood test detects unseen blood in feces that leads to the screening of colon cancer. But a positive test could also leads to other serious issues.

Dr. Robert Steele, the lead author and Professor of Surgery from the University of Dundee Ninewells Hospital and Medical School said, "People with traces of blood in their bowel as picked up by the bowel screening test are at a 58 percent higher risk of premature death from a variety of causes—not just bowel cancer."

Steele claimed that inflammation might even lead to bleeding in the bowel, Alzheimer’s disease and other types of cancers. Dr. Marc Siegel, a clinical professor of medicine from NYU Langone Medical Center in New York said, "Inflammation is related to excess weight, insulin resistance, lack of exercise and poor diet."

A healthier lifestyle or proper treatment for the associated medical conditions would result in positive health benefits even if the bowel screening test is positive. But one should keep in mind that the chance of death for people with blood in their stool is nearly 8 times comparatively.

Dr. Uri Ladabaum, the professor of medicine from Stanford University School of Medicine in California, said"Testing for hidden blood in the stool can find early colorectal cancer or pre-cancer, leading to decreased risk of colorectal cancer death; I don't think that colorectal cancer screening programs should be tasked with dealing with all the possible non-colorectal cancer risks that might be signaled by hidden blood in the stool.”

The post Hidden Blood in Stool Could Predict Fatal Health Conditions appeared first on Drugdu.com

from Drugdu  https://goo.gl/QgQoHk

Novel Blood Test to Predict TB

More than ten million people have been diagnosed with tuberculosis, among which 2 million people die worldwide. Therefore, the highly pathogenic disease named tuberculosis was considered as the leading cause of death throughout the world. In the same way that finding a single stop therapeutic solution for tuberculosis is highly challenging, even predicting its onset in advance seems to be equally perplexing.

But the research team led by Dr. Gerhard Walzl from Stellenbosch University in South Africa has discovered a new blood test to predict tuberculosis development up to two years before its onset in high-risk patients. In the study, the expression level of four genes named “RISK4”, associated with inflammatory response, were measured. This novel test could also predict tuberculosis condition without putting a large number of lower-risk people through unnecessary prevention therapy.

“An individual component of this signature may not be sufficient to deliver an accurate diagnosis of prediction, but a combination of these markers improves its accuracy," Dr. Gerhard Walzl said. He further added, "We are hoping that primary health clinics will be able to use such a test and the reagents would then be readily available in that format, similar to the tests that are currently used to diagnose TB."

The post Novel Blood Test to Predict TB appeared first on Drugdu.com

from Drugdu  https://goo.gl/QgQoHk