Category Health/Medical

Serial home tests would reduce unnecessary colonoscopy testing. Patients with suspected inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) could benefit from better testing protocols that would reduce the need and lengthy wait for potentially unnecessary colonoscopies, a new study has found.

In a paper published in Frontline Gastroenterology, researchers from the Birmingham NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) at the University of Birmingham tested a new protocol to improve IBD diagnosis combining clinical history with multiple home stool tests.

In the two-year study involving 767 participants, patients were triaged and had repeated faecal calprotectin (FCP) tests and the research team found that the use of serial FCP tests were able to strongly predict possible IBD as well as Crohn’s Disease an...

Researchers at the University of Iowa in a new study have linked a region in the brain to how humans redirect thoughts and attention when distracted. The connection is important because it offers insights into cognitive and behavioral side effects to a technique being used to treat patients with Parkinson’s disease.

The subthalamic nucleus is a pea-sized brain region involved in the motor-contro...

A research team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has unearthed new findings which may help explain the connection between cancer risk and poor diet, as well as common diseases like diabetes, which arise from poor diet. The insights gained from this study hold promise for advancing cancer prevention strategies aimed at promoting healthy ageing.

Led by Professor Ashok Venkitaraman, this ground-breaking study was conducted by scientists from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at NUS and NUS Centre for Cancer Research (N2CR) under the Yon...

A new review of research evidence has explored the key differences in how women and men sleep, variations in their body clocks, and how this affects their metabolism.

Published in Sleep Medicine Reviews, the paper highlights the crucial role sex plays in understanding these factors and suggests a person’s biological sex should be considered when treating sleep, circadian rhythm and metabolic disorders.

Differences in sleep

The review found women rate their sleep quality lower than men’s and report more fluctuations in their quality of sleep, corresponding to changes throughout the menstrual cycle.

“Lower sleep quality is associated with anxiety and depressive disorders, which are twice as common in women as in men,” says Dr Sarah L...