Category Health/Medical

Researchers at the University of East Anglia have helped develop a new blood test to detect prostate cancer with greater accuracy than current methods.

New research shows that the Prostate Screening EpiSwitch (PSE) blood test is 94 per cent accurate — beating the currently used prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test.

The research team say that the new test shows significant potential as an accurate and rapid cancer screening diagnostic.

The test was developed by Oxford Biodynamics in collaboration with UEA, Imperial College London and Imperial College NHS Trust.

Prof Dmitry Pshezhetskiy, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men and kills one man every 45 minutes in the UK.

“There is currently no single te...

Women who followed most aspects of a healthy lifestyle, including healthy body weight, not smoking, regular exercise, adequate sleep, high quality diet, and moderate alcohol consumption, had about half the risk of long COVID compared with women without any healthy lifestyle factors, according to a study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“With ongoing waves of COVID-19, long COVID has created a serious public health burden. Our findings raise the possibility that adopting more healthy behaviors may reduce the risk of developing long COVID,” said Andrea Roberts, senior research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health and senior author of the study.

The study appears online February 6, 2023, in JAMA Internal Medicine.

It’s estimated that 8-23 million ...

Cinnamon, the well-known aromatic spice that many of us use to bake cakes and cook savory dishes, is derived from the inner bark of Cinnamomum trees. These are evergreen trees found in the Himalayas and other mountain areas, as well as in rainforests and other forests in southern China, India and Southeast Asia.

In addition to its unique flavor, cinnamon could have other beneficial properties for humans. For instance, studies suggest that cinnamon has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anticancer properties, and can also boost the immune system.

Some works also showed that its bioactive compounds could boost brain function, particularly memory and learning. Yet the validity of these findings is yet to be established with certainty.

A team of research...

Fractalkine appears to trigger repair of brain damage caused by the disease. A University of Alberta researcher is one step closer to demonstrating the potential of a brain molecule called fractalkine to halt and even reverse the effects of multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease in which the myelin, or fatty lining of nerve cells, is eroded, leading to nerve damage and slower signalling between the brain and the body. MS symptoms range from blurred vision to complete paralysis, and while there are treatments, the causes are not fully understood and nothing exists to reverse the disease process. More than 90,000 Canadians live with MS, according to the MS Society.

In new research published in Stem Cell Reports, Anastas...