disease

A team of physicists and engineers out of the University of California at Davis are taking the iPhone 4 to new heights--and they're not talking about No. 5.

Using materials that cost about as much as a typical app, they tricked out an iPhone with a few new tools, including a microscope, which--with the phone's camera--could identify features as small as 1.5 microns. That's small enough to identify different blood cell types.

"Field workers could put a blood sample on a slide, take a picture, and send it to specialists to analyze," says Sebastian Wachsmann-Hogiu, a physicist at the Center for Biophotonics, Science and Technology and lead author of the research to be presented in mid-October at the Optical Society's Annual Meeting in San Jose, Calif.

In rural clinics in developing nations, which tend to have limited if any lab equipment, these decked-out iPhones could help nurses and doctors diagnose a range of blood diseases by not only imaging blood cells but sending data in real time to colleagues anywhere around the world for further analysis.… Read more

When a team of cardiologists wanted to better understand an extremely rare heart condition called spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD), they reached out to possible participants on patient-run social-media sites dedicated to women's heart health.

It was something of a shot in the dark, but Mayo Clinic cardiologist Sharonne Hayes says that in doing so, her team stumbled on a novel way to recruit participants who are notoriously hard to track down.

"This is a completely different research model than Mayo Clinic is used to," said Hayes, whose findings appear in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. "Investigators here typically rely on the stores of patient information from the clinic. This was truly patient-initiated research."… Read more

Marketing and design company SapientNitro unveiled an app today that allows smokers to see exactly what cigarettes are doing to their lungs.

The AR Lungs app uses augmented reality and a database of medically correct digital lungs to illustrate the effects of cigarettes. People point a Webcam or smartphone camera at their chest and see a superimposed image of the digital lungs.

Using sliders, a person can adjust how many cigarettes they smoke a day and for how long to get a visual representation of the damage and discoloration they've suffered. A nonsmoker, meanwhile, would see healthy, pink lungs.

The app was developed as an unconventional way of spreading the antismoking message. The company said it is using the potential of augmented reality to help raise disease awareness. The digital lungs paint a stark image of the consequences of smoking.

Computer users with a Webcam can check the app out for free here. … Read more

You wouldn't know it by looking at it, but the naked mole-rat has a few things to teach the animal world. It has fascinated researchers since it was discovered a few years ago that the rodents can live for 30 years, compared to the mouse's average life span of four.

So after launching an online database that details the lives and histories of more than 4,000 animal species, a consortium of researchers from around the world set out to sequence the genome of the naked mole-rate--which is native to the deserts of East Africa.

With the help … Read more

A new saliva test developed by geneticists at the University of California, Los Angeles, reveals a person's age within five years, a finding that could have many applications in medicine, at crime scenes, and more.

"With just a saliva sample, we can accurately predict a person's age without knowing anything else about them," says principal investigator Dr. Eric Vilain, a professor of human genetics, pediatrics and urology, in a UCLA news release.

The team's research, published online this week in the Public Library of Science's PLoS One journal, focuses on methylation, a process by … Read more

We've all opened a household appliance--maybe a dishwasher, washing machine, or coffee maker--and winced at the ensuing smell.

The funk, according to new research published in the British Mycological Society journal Fungal Biology, comes in the form of various types of fungi that are frequently found to be an agent of human disease in compromised and healthy individuals alike.

"This is such a new thing that we have few tips," Nina Gunde-Cimerman, a professor at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, said in an e-mail. "A thorough heating at high temperatures would probably be beneficial, although … Read more

In a recent study of 37 healthy and symptomatic adults and children, a wireless near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) device performed as well in diagnosing bladder disease as current and often invasive techniques, such as cystoscopy.

"Currently, diagnosing bladder dysfunction usually requires an invasive test that involves urethral and rectal catheter insertion to measure bladder pressure and urine output--a stressful and painful procedure that provides a limited amount of physiologic information," said lead author Andrew Macnab, a pediatrics and urology professor at the University of British Columbia, in a news release.

"Our study shows that near-infrared spectroscopy--a non-toxic and … Read more

Any time someone concatenates the words "Paul Allen," "brain," and "science" in one sentence, two assumptions can safely be made: What's being described will be expensive; what's being described will be newsworthy.

And so it comes as little surprise that the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Brain Science announced this week a world first: a highly detailed guide to both the anatomy and the genes of the human brain that includes 1,000 anatomical landmarks backed by 100 million data points measuring the strength of gene activity at each landmark. The cost of … Read more

Researchers have unveiled encouraging results of the first human randomized control trial of a procedure called therapeutic renal denervation to reduce and control hypertension in patients where medications aren't working. The announcement came at this week's Society of Interventional Radiology's 36th Annual Scientific Meeting in Chicago.

While the study involved only 106 adults and was funded by the manufacturer of the catheter and generator, the procedure--which uses a catheter-based probe to emit high-frequency energy directly into the renal artery to deactivate nerves linked to high blood pressure--does appear to be effective. That's particularly notable because these … Read more