A young girl’s legacy: pioneering blood test can help treat rare childhood cancer
- A charity Alice’s Arc, set up in memory of a child who passed away from cancer, has seen remarkable results from a pilot study of a blood test that it funded
- The simple blood test could soon be used to determine the severity of rhabdomyosarcoma, the best treatment pathways and whether it has returned
- The research team at the Institute for Cancer have detected genetic changes in the illness to monitor tumour DNA in the patient’s blood
- The UK ranks favourably globally, scoring perfectly for: policy coordination, equity and participation; medicines regulation and research and development for novel products; and for effectiveness and AMR research in monitoring and evaluation
- The UK performs worst in accountability, education, public awareness and feedback mechanism
University of Gothenburg announces new blood test for Alzheimer’s disease
- Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have developed a blood test which can differentiate neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease from other dementias
- Alongside this, they have developed a new antibody which act solely on the tau isoforms which originate in the brain
- Plasma BD-tau was demonstrated to be a neurodegeneration marker that differentiated AD from non-Alzheimer dementias in individuals with autopsy-verified diagnoses
PCN cut antibiotic use by a third with on-site strep A testing
- A PCN from Devon has used a Covid-19 testing machine to rapidly screen patients onsite for strep A
- The POC machine gave strep A results in 5 minutes – with normal testing yielding results in 2 to 3 days
- Patients with a high likelihood of having an infection were given antibiotics, those who ranked lower but could still have a bacterial infection were tested for strep A
- 66% of those tested has strep A meaning that antibiotics use was reduced by 33%
Point-of-care testing for infectious diseases in emergency settings
- An interesting article from Health Europa, with healthcare professionals providing their views on POC testing and how they can be applied in A&E
