News
New prostate screening guidelines. In a report released October 7, the U.S. Preventive Task Force advised that PSA blood tests should no longer be part of routine health screenings for healthy men of any age. The task force asserted that results of PSA blood tests are often inconclusive and that treatment that some men have received subsequent to the tests has sometimes been harmful to them. According to the panel, an abnormal amount of prostate-specific antigen in the blood sometimes is a signal of prostate cancer, but it also can indicate a benign enlarged prostate or simple infection. In addition, the PSA blood test cannot distinguish between very small, slow-growing tumors that are not life-threatening and more aggressive tumors that require treatment.
The result of the antigen test being part of routine screening, the task force says, is that many men who “test positive” receive treatments—biopsies, radiation, surgery—that can lead to incontinence, impotence, infection, and, rarely, death. After analyzing five major past studies of the value of PSA blood tests being part of routine screenings, the task force concluded that little, if any, reduction in deaths from prostate cancer has been associated with the practice.
New Studies
A diagnostic blood test for heart attacks? The Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology reports the development of a new blood test that could possibly help cardiologists to diagnose heart attacks. Researchers at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine say that a large protein, cardiac myosin binding protein-C, is released into the blood in the aftermath of a heart attack.
Genomics
Genomic architecture presages genomic instability. When cells divide normally, DNA gets copied perfectly and distributed among the daughter cells with an even hand. Occasionally though, DNA breaks during division and is rearranged, resulting in duplications or deletions of important parts of the blueprint. Now researchers at Baylor College of Medicine who study families with such genomic disorders have found a shared, yet unusual, architecture resulting from this jumble that is associated with very severe forms of disease. They have also identified the genomic elements that produce such architecture, a finding that will help predict other unstable regions in the human genome. The unusual architecture left a footprint, and a search for similar footprints in other regions of the genome may identify regions that underwent the same alteration during the evolutionary past. This event might occur more often than previously suspected.
Alzheimer's Diseases
New blood test may predict Alzheimer's progression. Researchers at The Johns Hopkins University say they may have found a way to answer one of the most anguished questions patients—or family members—ask after a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease: How quickly will it progress? The Johns Hopkins scientists assert there is a link between the ratio of two fatty compounds in the blood and the loss of cognitive function. Their finding: the higher the level of plasma sphingomyelins and the lower the level of ceramide—two types of fat found in cells—the slower dementia will progress.
“We're confident there's a relationship between these lipids and AD [Alzheimer's dementia] progression,” says lead researcher Michelle Mielke, PhD. “But this work is not yet ready to be used clinically.”If and when it is, it could help give patients and caregivers better information to prepare for the future, and it could help clinicians know who needs still-to-be-developed treatments most urgently. Also, a better understanding of the role blood-fat ratios play in cognitive decline may lead to ways to delay that decline.
Infectious Diseases
CDC: diabetes device-related infections a growing concern. Improper use of glucose monitoring and insulin delivery devices in clinical settings has the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention worried about an uptick in infectious disease transmission. The number of patients exposed to blood-borne infections during diabetes testing, glucose monitoring, and insulin delivery in group settings is rising, according to the CDC.
Misused equipment and improperly trained staff have forced thousands to undergo testing for HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C during the past decade. An aging population and the increasing rate of diabetes has the CDC concerned about further potential outbreaks.
Bad hospital practices were blamed in the most recent patient advisory, when more than 2,300 patients were potentially exposed to infectious diseases at a Wisconsin hospital where a fingerstick blood glucose sampling pen wasn't properly cleaned between uses.
Fears rise about drug-resistant TB. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the densely populated London borough of Brent is at the center of the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis throughout Europe. Moreover, the six countries that have the highest rate of patients with the drug-resistant form of the disease are all European nations. Prompt, concerted action is needed to prevent an even worse humanitarian and economic crisis.
According to Hans Kluge, a special representative on drug-resistant tuberculosis in the WHO's European region, “This problem is a man-made phenomenon resulting from inadequate treatment or poor airborne infection control. We need wide involvement to tackle the damage that humankind has done.”
The WHO has a plan to fight the disease over the next few years that may save the lives of as many as 120,000 patients. The plan is to commit dedicated facilities to diagnose the rising number of cases and treat as many people as possible. Ineffective diagnosis and treatment have indeed been the culprits so far. The WHO estimates that only about one-third of the 81,000 new cases in 2009 were diagnosed, and less than a quarter of patients with multidrug-resistant TB were adequately treated.
Conferences
Nov. 17-19. The Association for Molecular Pathology Annual Meeting, at the Gaylord Texan Hotel & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas, has on its program an exciting series of workshops, including “”microRNA Applications in Oncology”; “Genetics of Primary Immunodeficiency Syndromes: Newborn Screening and Follow-up Assays”; and “The Significance of IGH Mutational Status in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia,” among many others. Its Plenary Sessions include “Circulating Tumor Cells and Nucleic Acids”; “SNP Arrays in Hematopathology and Solid Tumors”; “Next Generation Sequencing”; Multianalyte Testing in Infectious Diseases”; and “Pharmacogenomics: Molecular Genetics in Drug Developing.”
Learn more at www.amp.org/meetings/2011/preliminary_program.cfm.
