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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 ...

Prototype breath tests spot bacterial infections in minutes

Infectious diseases are a major cause of death worldwide, and diagnosing bacterial infections remains a challenge in medicine. And doing so reliably is more important than ever, given the increasing frequency of antibiotic ...

Novel X-ray technique could transform tissue diagnosis

A new X-ray imaging technique could transform how hospitals analyze tissue samples, potentially speeding up diagnoses and improving outcomes for patients, shows a new study led by UCL researchers. The technology, developed ...

Mpox immune test validated during Rwandan outbreak

An antibody test for the infectious disease mpox was successfully developed during the new clade 1b outbreak in Rwanda, the first time that an assay of its kind has been validated within this setting. The test, an IgG ELISA ...

HIV-seq tool finds active reservoir cells during therapy

For people living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), life-saving antiretroviral therapy keeps their HIV-infected immune cells from making new copies of the virus, preventing illness and transmission. Historically, these ...

Cheek cells may provide clues to schizophrenia risk

A simple cheek swab could one day provide a quick and noninvasive diagnostic test for schizophrenia. A new study published in Science Advances has identified higher levels of two biological markers in the cheek swabs of patients ...