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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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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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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