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Finger-prick diabetes blood test could be early warning for children

BBC News

All UK children could be offered screening for type 1 diabetes using a simple finger-prick blood test, say researchers who have been running a large study. Currently, many young people go undiagnosed and risk developing a life-threatening complication called diabetic ketoacidosis that needs urgent hospital treatment. Identifying diabetes earlier could help avoid this and mean treatments to control problematic blood sugar levels can be given sooner. Some 17,000 children aged three to 13 have already been checked as part of the ELSA (Early Surveillance for Autoimmune diabetes) study, funded by diabetes charities. Imogen, who is 12 and from the West Midlands, is one of those found to have diabetes thanks to the screening.


Japan team builds AI model to identify diabetes risk from electrocardiogram data

The Japan Times

Researchers from the Institute of Science Tokyo and other institutions have developed an AI model that detects high diabetes risk using only electrocardiogram data. A team of researchers from organizations such as the Institute of Science Tokyo said Tuesday it has developed an artificial intelligence model that can detect a high risk of diabetes using only electrocardiogram (EKG) data. This method, which does not require blood tests, can lead to possible early detection of the disease and help those at high risk review their lifestyles, according to the team. Together with other team members, Tetsuya Yamada, a professor at the university, divided about 16,000 people who underwent medical checkups in Tokyo in 2022 into a group of diabetics and prediabetics, with higher-than-standard blood sugar levels, and a group of subjects with normal readings. The team put its EKG data into an AI model to analyze minuscule changes in cardiac muscle movement that appear in the prediabetic stage.


Blood Tests for Alzheimer's Are Here

WIRED

Blood Tests for Alzheimer's Are Here New diagnostic kits aim to revolutionize early screening of the disease, potentially allowing patients to receive treatments--such as monoclonal antibodies--sooner. Last month, The US Food and Drug Administration approved a new blood test for assisting the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Tau is one of two proteins, the other being amyloid, that become malformed and accumulate in the brains of patients with certain types of dementia. It is believed that the buildup of these proteins interferes with the communication of brain cells, leading to these patients' symptoms. The test had already received authorization in July for marketing in Europe and is thus the first early screening system for Alzheimer's for use in primary care settings approved in the planet's two major pharmaceutical markets.



What's my Alzheimer's risk, and can I really do anything to change it?

New Scientist

What's my Alzheimer's risk, and can I really do anything to change it? Can you escape your genetic inheritance, and do lifestyle changes actually make a difference? Daniel Cossins set out to understand what the evidence on Alzheimer's really means for him A few years ago, my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, just like his older brother and his mum before him. Slowly, his personality began to ebb away. Now, at the age of 75, his cognitive decline is accelerating: he no longer recognises his granddaughters, for instance, and he lives in a near-constant state of confusion, which means he is losing his independence, too. As I process this loss and try to support my parents, I have become increasingly curious about what my family history means for me.


Alzheimer's blood test could 'revolutionise' diagnosis

BBC News

More than 1,000 people across the UK with suspected dementia are to be offered a blood test for Alzheimer's disease which it is hoped could revolutionise diagnosis of the disease. The blood test can detect biomarkers for rogue proteins which accumulate in the brains of patients with the condition and will be used in addition to pen and paper cognitive tests, which often misdiagnose it in its early stages. Scientists leading the trial at University College London believe the blood test will improve the accuracy of diagnosis from 70% to more than 90% and want to see how that helps patients and clinicians. Patients will be recruited at 20 memory clinics as part of the study, which aims to see how well the test works within the NHS. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia and is associated with the build-up in the brain of two rogue proteins - amyloid and tau - which can accumulate for up to 20 years before symptoms emerge.


Can amazing tech reboot healthcare? A new book explores the future

New Scientist

Will robots routinely take cheek swabs in the future – and if so, how soon will this happen? Robotic pets that boost well-being. It is hard to predict the future with any certainty, but, as a biomedical reporter, I was curious to read a book that envisions how fast-evolving technology could transform healthcare. In Hacking Humanity: How technology can save your health, and your life, Lara Lewington draws on more than a decade of experience as a technology reporter at the BBC to cover an impressive array of innovations: from medical robots to lab-grown organs and genetic editing to treat certain conditions. "Let me show you the way to a future where we shall be hacking humanity," she writes in the introduction.


Biden camp denies cancer was diagnosed earlier amid cover-up claims

Al Jazeera

Former United States President Joe Biden was not diagnosed with prostate cancer before last week, and received his "last known" blood test for the disease more than a decade ago, his office has said. The Biden camp's statement on Tuesday came as critics, including current President Donald Trump, stoked scepticism over the timing of the diagnosis, which has reanimated questions about whether the former president misled the public about his health while in office. "President Biden's last known PSA was in 2014," Biden's office said in the brief statement, referring to the prostate-specific antigen test used to detect prostate cancer. "Prior to Friday, President Biden had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer." On Monday, Trump said he was "surprised" that the public had not been notified about Biden's diagnosis "a long time ago".


Thirteen proteins in your blood could reveal the age of your brain

New Scientist

Researchers trained an artificial intelligence model to gauge people's ages from their brain scans The abundance of 13 proteins in your blood seems to be a strong indicator of how rapidly your brain is ageing. This suggests that blood tests could one day help people track and even boost their brain health. Most previous studies that have looked at protein markers of brain ageing in the blood have involved fewer than 1000 people, says Nicholas Seyfried at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who wasn't involved in the new research. To get a broader idea of the impact of these proteins, Wei-Shi Liu at Fudan University in China and his colleagues analysed MRI brain scan data from nearly 11,000 adults from the UK Biobank project, whose ages ranged from around 50 to 80 at the time of imaging. Using data from 70 per cent of the participants, Liu's team trained an artificial intelligence model to predict how old the participants were based on features of the brain images, such as the size of different brain regions and how distinct parts connected to each other.


Artificial Intelligence for Infectious Disease Prediction and Prevention: A Comprehensive Review

Melchane, Selestine, Elmir, Youssef, Kacimi, Farid, Boubchir, Larbi

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and infectious diseases prediction have recently experienced a common development and advancement. Machine learning (ML) apparition, along with deep learning (DL) emergence, extended many approaches against diseases apparition and their spread. And despite their outstanding results in predicting infectious diseases, conflicts appeared regarding the types of data used and how they can be studied, analyzed, and exploited using various emerging methods. This has led to some ongoing discussions in the field. This research aims not only to provide an overview of what has been accomplished, but also to highlight the difficulties related to the types of data used, and the learning methods applied for each research objective. It categorizes these contributions into three areas: predictions using Public Health Data to prevent the spread of a transmissible disease within a region; predictions using Patients' Medical Data to detect whether a person is infected by a transmissible disease; and predictions using both Public and patient medical data to estimate the extent of disease spread in a population. The paper also critically assesses the potential of AI and outlines its limitations in infectious disease management.