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Laboratory medicine news

New hantavirus sequencing tool maps whole genomes from hard-to-test samples

Infections by hantaviruses are rare but dangerous, killing 30–40% of infected people. When cases occur, public health officials need rapid, detailed information about the virus to identify the strain and its origin, so they ...

New medium offers faster, cheaper drug-resistance detection

A critical problem in treating Clostridioides difficile infections is the possibility that the pathogen develops resistance to fidaxomicin, an antibiotic often prescribed as a first-line treatment. But current methods used ...

Are you sleep deprived? Your spit may hold answer

Sleep loss dulls alertness and coordination, and it can produce effects similar to severe intoxication, making actions like driving incredibly risky. But there's no clinical test for determining when someone is dangerously ...

Can AI beat breast cancer?

An artificial intelligence (AI) system that combines breast cancer tissue images with molecular marker data achieves high accuracy in diagnosis, tumor classification, and survival prediction. Details of the research are reported ...

Blood test detects early signs of breast cancer recurrence

Researchers at Lund University have developed a blood test capable of detecting signs of breast cancer recurrence long before recurrence becomes visible on imaging or causes symptoms. It has previously been shown that this ...

Costs pose hurdle for promising new hepatitis C lab test

A new rapid test for hepatitis C could help identify many more patients who could be cured of the deadly disease, but its use may be limited unless insurers' reimbursement rises to cover its high cost, according to researchers ...

New ALS diagnostic blood test boasts 97% accuracy

ALS is a debilitating paralytic disease characterized as the death of upper and lower motor neurons. Fortunately, ALS is relatively rare, with an incidence rate of 1.6 per 100,000 adults, resulting in about 30,000 cases in ...

Your blood proteins could predict your risk of an early death

Imagine if a simple blood test could offer a glimpse into your future health. Not just whether you have heart disease or cancer today, but whether your overall risk of dying in the next five or ten years is higher or lower ...

Cell-free DNA could detect adverse events from immunotherapy

A noninvasive blood test to detect genetic material shed by tumors may help clinicians identify adverse events related to treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitor drugs, investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer ...