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."

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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."

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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.”

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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."

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Blood Transfer to Reverse Ageing

It might sound crazy; but yes. It’s possible to reverse aging by transfusing the blood of teenagers into older adults. Though this idea seems to be haunting everyone’s mind, it finally got implemented by a startup company named Ambrosia in California. Ambrosia conducted human trials, where every 1.5 liters young plasma transfusion would cost around $8000 to the participants. This human trial was completed on Jan 15, 2018, with noteworthy results.

Anti-aging studies are still going on worldwide, in spite of having lots of good and bad consequences. During the 1950’s, scientists proved that the organs of older mice became healthier, by injecting them with younger blood. The scientists also found that aging was connected to only body and it’s ultimately the blood which directs aging.

Tony Wyss-Coray from Stanford University criticized the study of Ambrosia since they charged the participants. Keeping that in mind, he led the anti-aging study in 2014 with his company Alkahest to detect the effect of young blood on Alzheimer patients free of cost. In the U.S. alone, the anti-aging industry is worth around $250 billion and hence it is sure that many private businesses would surely show their interest in this research.

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Stored Blood May Be Unsafe

A team of scientists from the Alabama University has discovered that blood stored for longer durations may be less safe for patients suffering from severe blood loss and shock.

In the cases of severely injured patients with excessive bleeding, the need of the hour would be a blood transfusion. But if older stored blood were to be used, it could lead to life-threatening symptoms such as pneumonia, dysfunction in blood flow, and an increased inflammation in organs. The research team found a link between older stored blood transfusion and subsequent bacterial pneumonia.

Stored blood transfusion releases the inflammation mediator HMGB1, which is a part of the body's immune response.

Heme is a part of hemoglobin pigment, which gives red blood cells their red color. Heme could be safe in red blood cells but when heme is freed from a globin component, it becomes toxic and leads to tissue injury.

When the blood is stored for a long duration, the red blood cells release free heme during transfusion. Free heme releases the inflammation mediator HMGB1, a part of the body's immune response, induces inflammation and causing sepsis in major organs of the body. This condition may even lead to sudden death.

Rakesh Patel from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the US said, "An adverse role for heme suggests that finding ways to limit heme exposure or prevent heme toxicity may improve the safety of stored red blood cell transfusions." 

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Blood Test to Predict Drug Activity Against Breast Cancer

Scientists from MRC discovered a blood test to detect whether a patient was reacting to the breast cancer drug palbociclib.

At present, breast cancer patients need to wait for nearly two to three months to find out via a scan whether palbociclib is working. This new test could detect the circulating tumor DNA which enters the bloodstream. By measuring and comparing PIK3CA levels in a blood test before and 15 post palbociclib therapy, one could predict the effectiveness of the drug.

Professor Nicholas Turner opens, senior author and Professor of Molecular Oncology at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said “Having an early indication of how likely a treatment is to work might allow us to adapt treatment – switching some patients to an alternative drug that is more likely to benefit them.”

Dr. Nathan Richardson, Head of Molecular and Cellular Medicine at the MRC, also stated “It is exciting to see that using advances in diagnostic techniques, such as genetic tests for circulating tumor DNA, we may be able to more accurately define groups of patients and help us deliver the right treatment to the right patient sooner. This study provides early evidence that might help us understand sooner when a drug is successfully treating breast cancer, and if not, it can be discontinued and better approaches pursued.”

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Smart Stent to Continuously Monitor Blood Flow

A research team from the University of British Columbia electrical and computer engineering professor Kenichi Takahata has developed a smart stent that monitors elusive changes in artery blood-flow, which can aid in earlier detection and diagnosis making treatment possible. 

Kenichi Takahata said "We modified a stent to function as a miniature antenna and added a special micro-sensor that we developed to continuously track blood flow. The data can then be sent wirelessly to an external reader, providing constantly updated information on the artery's condition".

The smart stent looks similar to most commercial stents and uses medical-grade stainless steel. The researcher remarked that the devices as the first angioplasty smart stent, can be implanted in the patients without any modification in current medical procedures.

“Monitoring the recurrence of abnormal narrowing of an artery after standard stent surgery is critical in maintaining health disease”. “Implanting a smart stent instead of standard stent can assist clinicians in early detection and monitor their patient's health more easily and offer early treatment” stated Research collaborator Dr. York Hsiang, a UBC professor of surgery and a vascular surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital

The device prototype was successfully lab tested in a pig model. The research team is looking at industry partnerships to further advance the device, put it through clinical trials and eventually commercialize it.

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Novel Blood Test to Determine Right Time for Drug Administration

A research team from the Charité – Universitätsmediz in Berlin have developed a blood test to detect the state of a patient’s internal clock. It aims to helps physicians establish the optimal time for drug administration when the drugs would be most effective with the least side effects. This study was published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The research team claimed that the effectiveness of drugs depends on the time of administration on a personalized level. Their goal was to identify the biomarkers in blood to characterize the ‘internal time’ of an individual.

The overall activity of 20,000 genes in a specific blood cell-type throughout the day was measured in multiple participants. A specialized computer algorithm was used where around 12 genes were identified to report internal time in a reliable manner. These biomarkers in a single blood type could distinguish between the early and late types of patients to the extent of even determining whether they get up in the early morning since this practice works against the natural biological clock.

Professor Achim Kramer, the lead investigator from the university’s Institute for Medical Immunology stated about chronotherapy, “Such a therapy taking time of day into consideration has been rarely applied until now, since a simple diagnostic was unavailable; we think this novel objective test of internal time can contribute to time of day gaining more meaning in diagnosis and therapy.”

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Blood Test to Detect Autism

A research team from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has developed a blood test to detect autism by measuring metabolites from blood samples well in advance. The research work was recently published in Bioengineering & Translational Medicine.

Juergen Hahn, PhD, the lead author cum professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute said,  “We are able to predict with 88 percent accuracy whether children have autism; The previous study had developed an algorithm that makes use of concentrations of components in your blood to predict if the blood came from a child with ASD or a typically developing peer.”

Hahn claimed that two cellular pathways named methionine cycle and the transsulfuration pathway were suspected to be linked to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This blood test predicted autism with an accuracy rate of 88%. Hahn further added, “If this can be further replicated in a larger cohort recruited at multiple sites, then there is the promise of having a commercially available test in the future that can support an autism diagnosis; Such a test would not replace existing observational diagnoses but can supplement them.”

Hahn noted that it would take several years to reach the market. Samuel Malloy, the medical director at Dr. Felix, an online pharmacy in the UK said, “With the complexity and breadth of diagnosis, a blood test for autism seems unlikely to be able to take into account these individual differences unless the diagnostic criteria are developed further.”

Another alternative blood and urine tests to detect autism were developed by Naila Rabbani, a researcher from the University of Warwick in England along with her team, where ASD was linked to blood plasma proteins through oxidation and glycation. 

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$20 Blood Test to Detect Hepatitis B

Hepatitis is considered as the seventh leading cause of death throughout the world, where half of the deaths occur due to hepatitis B viral infection. Early cost-effective diagnosis could help in treating the affected patients without any delay.

A research team from Imperial College London and Medical Research Council Unit, the Gambia at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Pasteur Institute in Paris along with other African and European institutions, have developed a simple, accurate and inexpensive diagnostic blood test called TREAT-B, to identify patients affected with hepatitis B. It is more accessible compared to existing methods such as liver biopsies or HBV DNA analyses, which require proper resources. The results, published in the Journal of Hepatology, indicated that the diagnostic test shows 85% sensitivity and 77% specificity.

This test needs further research to be developed as a finger-prick test for swifter results.

Dr. Maud Lemoine, the co-author of the study said, "These results show that this simple and inexpensive test could be an accurate way to diagnose patients in need of hepatitis B treatment in countries with limited resources.” Another co-author Yusuke Shimakawa from the Pasteur Institute said, "Once these results are validated by further studies, they could be potentially integrated into the WHO guidelines and local guidelines—and implemented in daily practice; There is great potential to diagnose more people and improve access to treatment.”  

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The future of lung function tests for COPD

With the global increase of lung diseases such as asthma, severe bronchitis and emphysema, lung function tests are becoming a bigger concern for many people.

Spirometry (measuring lung function) is the most well know pulmonary function test and vital to diagnose COPD. Some of the diseases which can be detected are:

1. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) – main term used to describe lung diseases such as asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis etc.

2. Asthma – common and long-term lung disease characterised by coughing, shortness of breath or wheezing.

3. Chronic bronchitis – bronchial tubes become inflamed and produce an excessive amount of mucus.

4. Emphysema – the long-term progressive disease where alveoli in the lungs become inflamed causing shortness of breath.

5. Cystic fibrosis – genetic lung disease characterized by frequent lung infections and coughing up mucus as a result of this.

6. Pulmonary fibrosis - interstitial lung diseases resulting in the scarring of the lungs.

Doing the test itself is quite simple and usually involves the patient blowing as hard as possible into a tube which is attached to a spirometer, the main piece of medical equipment used for the test. The results of this lung function test will indicate how healthy the patient’s lungs are.

Pulmonary function monitoring is, however, becoming just as simple as taking blood pressure and not necessarily something you have to go to the hospital for anymore. With advances in the field, the big clunky machines of the past have been transformed into, smaller, portable medical devices that are simple to use and have great technological features.

One example of this is Shenzhen Mellow Hope’s Smart Spirometer which can be used in clinics and homes alike. Not only can you connect this device with your smartphone, it also has a cloud-based mobile app platform, allowing patients the possibility of self-monitoring and, with the community forum, patients are capable of keeping track of their health with ease while keeping relevant parties informed.

With pulmonary function monitoring in the palm of our hands, lung diseases can now be managed with more precision than ever before.

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New Blood Test for Liver Cancer Shows Promising Results

Liver cancer is the second most common cancer with a high mortality rate worldwide. According to WHO, liver cancer is the fifth most common cancer in men and seventh most common cancer in women. Treatment could be possible only if diagnosed at an early stage. Hence research studies were conducted worldwide to find the most accurate diagnostic tool to detect liver cancer.

On April 19, 2018, Epigenomics AG had announced promising results of the mSEPT9 blood test, which could detect liver cancer among cirrhosis patients with high specificity and sensitivity. This blood test exhibited higher accuracy, compared to alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) marker test, which had been currently used as a diagnostic marker for liver cancer.

Jorge Garces, President & Chief Scientific Officer of Epigenomics AG said, “We are very excited about the promising clinical results of our mSEPT9 blood test in the diagnosis of liver cancer; in the future, an accurate blood test could offer the opportunity to closely monitor patients at high risk for developing liver cancer.”

“Future prospective studies should assess the mSEPT9 test in a screening algorithm for patients with cirrhosis to improve risk prediction and the personalized therapeutic management of liver cancer”, said Abderrahim Oussalah MD, Ph.D., Department of Molecular Medicine at the University Hospital of Nancy (France).

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Blood Test to Diagnose Vertigo & Hearing Loss

There are numerous blood tests currently to diagnose diseases and health disorders. But it was great news to hear that a simple blood test was discovered to detect common disorders like hearing loss and vertigo.

At present, hearing loss could be diagnosed only by hearing tests such as audiogram. But it was impossible to detect at an earlier stage itself. Similarly, it was equally challenging to detect vertigo where several expensive and time-consuming imaging tests are used.

Dr. Kourosh Parham, associate professor and director of research in the Division of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery from UConn Health had discovered two unique inner ear proteins (Prestin and Otolin-1) in minute quantities in the blood, which could be served as blood biomarkers and their levels would be correlated with the extent of inner ear disorders well in advance. The release of these biomarkers could be traced via blood tests.

The blood biomarker named Prestin has been linked to hearing loss. In the same way,  the unique protein called Otolin-1 has been linked to vertigo.

This unique blood test for hearing loss and vertigo was developed and patented in the name of  Dr. Kourosh Parham, who is currently testing its effect at UConn Health. Since the test gave positive reports in the laboratory, he will be proceeding to human trials soon.

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