Would You Take A Blood Test That Predicts How Long You Will Live?

REUTERS/Luis Galdamez

Daily Mail: Would YOU take it? Scientists discover breakthrough blood test that could 'predict how long people will live'

* Experts at Boston University claim to have discovered the game-changing test
* They believe biomarker patterns in the blood will help predict a person's probability of developing cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes
* The discovery means patients will be able to identify realistic health risks early - and, crucially, modify behaviour to change the outcome

It may sound like the premise of a science fiction film.

But, believe it or not, scientists at Boston University claim to have discovered a game-changing blood test that could help predict lifespans.

The study, published in the journal Aging Cell on Friday, used biomarker data collected from 5,000 blood samples and analysed it against the donors' health developments over the subsequent eight years.

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CSN Editor: I wold definitely take it .... and avoid (or minimise) the risk factors that such a test would discover.

How One Drop Of Blood Can Tell Your Medical History

The virus SV40, which might cause cancer in humans. Phoebus87 via Wikimedia Commons

Popular Science: Your History In A Drop Of Blood

A new test can see just about every virus you've ever had

A blood sample can now reveal a record of viruses you’ve had throughout life, thanks to a new test developed at Harvard called VirScan. It looks for evidence of antibodies produced by the immune system to kill viral invaders. “It’s kind of like fishing,” says geneticist Tomasz Kula. “We’ve made this huge pond [of viral bits], and we see which ones the antibodies stick to.”

How it works: VirScan matches antibodies in a person’s blood sample to a library of 93,000 snippets of viral code. It can find evidence of up to 1,000 different viruses.

Here are the viruses the team found in 303 blood samples--hover over the yellow circles to learn more.

CSN Editor: Recent advances in diagnostics have been truly impressive.

The Future Of Surgical Robotics Is Microscopic

The NeuroArm, a non-ferrous microsurgical robot—shown here with an electrified cutting tool and suction instrument—was used to remove a patient's brain tumor in 2008, while she was being scanned with an MRI. University of Calgary

The Microscopic Future of Surgical Robotics -- Erik Sofge, Popular Science

Chances are, you aren’t, and never will be, an astronaut. So the recent revelation that NASA is funding the development of a somewhat gruesome-sounding surgical bot—a fist-size contraption that would enter a patient’s gas-engorged abdomen to staunch bleeding or remove a ruptured appendix—isn’t exactly news you can use. The more relevant announcement might be from Intuitive Surgical, which announced that its newest robo-surgeon has been approved by the FDA. With thinner and more maneuverable arms, the da Vinci Xi will turn more open surgeries into minimally-invasive, robot-assisted procedures. Instead of requiring large incisions to get at various portions of a patient’s anatomy, the Xi will let surgeons reach essentially anywhere in the abdomen through smaller less traumatic punctures. With this clearance, the likelihood that you’ll one day be under the robotic knife just jumped significantly.

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My Comment: A good review on robotic advances in microsurgery.

Injecting Oxygen Into The Blood

Blood: Injecting oxygen into the bloodstream could help keep patients who cannot breathe alive while undergoing medical treatment

Scientist Invents Way To Keep People Alive Even When They Can't Breathe By Injecting Oxygen Into The Blood -- Daily Mail

Scientists have discovered a new way of administering oxygen to the blood which could allow people to stay alive without breathing.

The amazing breakthrough could change medical science by eliminating the need to keep patients breathing during complex operations.

The procedure, which works by injecting oxygen molecules enclosed in fatty molecules directly into the bloodstream, could grant people an extra 30 minutes of life when they cannot breathe.

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My Comment: The applications are enormous .... hurry up with the R&D.

How Turbines Can Replace A Heart

Man With No Pulse: How Turbines Can Replace A Heart -- New Scientist

You no longer need a heartbeat to be alive. In a groundbreaking surgery last year, doctors William Cohn and Bud Frazier from the Texas Heart Institute in Houston replaced a dying man's heart with twin turbines, resulting in the first living person without a pulse.

In this short film called Heart Stop Beating, directed by Jeremiah Zagar, you can follow the revolutionary procedure. Compared to artificial hearts that mimic real ones, the device is thought to be much more durable, since it has no flexible membranes or complex twisting mechanisms. "No one has been able to make a self-contained pulsatile device that can last more than two years or so and most wear out sooner," says Cohn.

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My Comment: 30 years ago this was just a concept and a dream .... today .... reality.

Exoskeleton Helps the Paralysed Walk Again

From New Scientist:

Amanda Boxtel, a wheelchair user, is about to stand up. A skiing accident 18 years ago partially severed her spinal cord leaving her paralysed from the waist down. She slowly pushes herself out of the chair with crutches, teeters backward for a second, then leans forward – and takes a step. Soon she is walking around the warehouse in Berkeley, California, under her own direction.

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Better Surgery With New Surgical Robot With Force Feedback

Surgical robot Sofie. (Credit: Bart van Overbeeke)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2010) — Robotic surgery makes it possible to perform highly complicated and precise operations. Surgical robots have limitations, too. For one, the surgeon does not 'feel' the force of his incision or of his pull on the suture, and robots are also big and clumsy to use. Therefore TU/e researcher Linda van den Bedem developed a much more compact surgical robot, which uses 'force feedback' to allow the surgeon to feel what he or she is doing.

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Painless Laser Device Could Spot Early Signs Of Disease

Photo: Fibre-optic probes could use lasers to distinguish between cancerous, pre-cancerous and healthy cells

From The BBC:

Portable devices with painless laser beams could soon replace X-rays as a non-invasive way to diagnose disease.

Researchers say that the technique could become widely available in about five years.

The method, called Raman spectroscopy, could help spot the early signs of breast cancer, tooth decay and osteoporosis.

Scientists believe that the technology would make the diagnosis of illnesses faster, cheaper and more accurate.

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Alternative To X-Rays Makes Its First Step

The initial object imaged through a layer of white paint (A) was a 32-pixel by 32-pixel image of a flower; the image was reconstructed with a new technique (B), matching the original by roughly 94.5 percent. Credit: Sylvain Gigan et al.

From Live Science:

A day when doctors need only visible light instead of X-rays to view a patient's innards can now be more easily imagined, with the announcement of a way to decipher the little light that passes through opaque materials.

Normally, one cannot see through opaque barriers such as paint, skin, fabric or eggshells because any light that does manage to make it through such materials is scattered in complicated and seemingly random ways. [Infographic: How Light Works]

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Saliva DNA Test Could Determine Future Health

A new DNA test uses saliva to determine whether someone is
prone to developing a life-threatening illness.

From The Guardian:

Quick, low-cost test being developed at Edinburgh University could determine whether a person is prone to disease.

A fast, low-cost DNA test which can determine a person's chances of developing certain inherited diseases could soon be a reality, scientists said today.

A drop of saliva will be enough to allow medics to pinpoint variations in patients' genetic code in a test being formulated by scientists at Edinburgh University.

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The Skull Bone Is Different To The Hip Bone

From The Telegraph:

Fundamental differences between skull and limb bones have been identified by British scientists in a discovery they hope will lead to treatments and even a cure for osteoperosis.

Bones in the arms and legs become weak and brittle in old age often because they are not engaged in as much exercise and bearing of weight as they are in youth.

However skull bone, which bears almost no weight throughout life, remains hard and particularly resistant to breaking.

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Fake Blood-Clotting Products To Heal Wounded Soldiers

Photo: Immediate treatment can save lives.

From The BBC:

Scientists say they have made a synthetic blood-clotting agent that could help wounded troops and patients.

In the lab, the fake platelets cut bleeding in half compared with having no treatment.

They could offer doctors a limitless supply with a longer shelf life than fresh donor platelets, the journal Science Translational Medicine reports.

The Case Western Reserve University team in the US hopes the product could become available in coming years.

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My Comment: This is going to save many lives.

Fake Platelets To Stem Blood Flow

Artist's impression of blood flow, including red and white blood cells and platelets (shown here in yellow). Synthetic platelets bind to natural platelets at the site of an injury, speeding up the clotting process. Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Scientists have developed artificial platelets to enhance the natural process of blood clotting, reducing the risk of fatal blood loss on the battlefield and in the emergency room.

Platelets are colourless disc-shaped cells which activate the blood clotting process, helping to form 'plugs' which stop blood flowing from cuts and grazes. However, they are sometimes overpowered by serious injury or trauma, which can lead to fatal blood loss.

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To Save Soldiers on The Battlefield, Darpa Invests In Suspended Animation

Better Medevac Darpa is investing nearly $10 million in creating a medical cocktail that will suspend soldiers' animation after sustaining wounds in battle, reducing their need for oxygenated blood and keeping them (barely) alive until they can receive proper treatment.

From Popular Science:

An active battlefield is a really inconvenient place to lose a lot of blood. But naturally that's exactly where soldiers sustain the bulk of their life-threatening injuries, so Darpa is committing $9.9 million to finding drugs that can extend the "golden hour" -- the one-hour window that medics generally have to bring a soldier back from severe blood loss -- by as much as six hours.

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Tiny 'Sticking Plaster' Nanoparticles For Broken Nerves Could Provide Spinal Cord Treatment

A new 'sticking plaster' technique could repair damaged spinal cords, helping people to walk again

From The Daily Mail:

Scientists last night raised hopes that microscopic nanoparticles could be injected into the spines of paralysed people to help them walk again.

They have conducted experiments on rats which show that the tiny particles can act as a 'sticking plaster' to repair broken nerves.

When the microscopic spheres, known as micelles, were injected into the tails of paralysed rats, they regained the use of all their limbs.

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Will a Shortage of Nuclear Isotopes Mean Less Effective Medical Tests?

Mo-99 One plan is to retrofit the University of Missouri Research Reactor to make Mo-99, but that won’t be completed until 2012. Courtesy University of Missouri

From Popular Science:

The Chalk River nuclear reactor in Ontario doesn’t sell a watt of electricity. Never has. But when it sprang a leak and shut down this spring, it threw a multibillion-dollar industry into crisis. Before it broke, the reactor produced nearly two thirds of the U.S. supply of molybdenum-99, or Mo-99, the isotope behind 16 million critical diagnostic medical tests each year. In July, things got worse: The Dutch reactor that supplied the remaining third shut down for a month of repair work.

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Spraying On Skin Cells To Heal Burns

Photo: Spray-on skin: In a unique treatment for second-degree burns, surgeons harvest a small number of skin cells through a skin biopsy, suspend them in solution, and then spray the resulting mixture onto a burn wound. Once in place, skin stem cells, called basal cells, proliferate to create a new layer of skin. Credit: ReCell

From Technology Review:

A new technique in burn treatment provides an alternative to skin grafts in the operating room.

Traditionally, treatment for severe second-degree burns consists of adding insult to injury: cutting a swath of skin from another site on the same patient in order to graft it over the burn. The process works, but causes more pain for the burn victim and doubles the area in need of healing. Now a relatively new technology has the potential to heal burns in a way that's much less invasive than skin grafts. With just a small skin biopsy and a ready-made kit, surgeons can create a suspension of the skin's basal cells--the stem cells of the epidermis--and spray the solution directly onto the burn with results comparable to those from skin grafts.

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Sniffing Out Swine Flu

From Slate:

Researchers hope to create a better way to diagnose swine flu and other ailments.

Crude methods of detecting swine flu have so far provoked hand-wringing and no small amount of ridicule. Planeloads of travelers to China have had laser beams aimed at their foreheads, landing some under quarantine (and spurring a YouTube minifest of airport videos). This summer, Slate reported on a camp that tried to prescreen kids for flu by checking campers for fevers—and failed to detect a sick child whose physician parent brought his temperature down with Tylenol, fueling an outbreak. Meanwhile, people infected with the virus can pass it on before they develop symptoms; others never develop fever at all.

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Regeneration Can Be Achieved After Chronic Spinal Cord Injury

Mark Tuszynski, MD, PhD. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - San Diego)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 31, 2009) — Scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that regeneration of central nervous system axons can be achieved in rats even when treatment delayed is more than a year after the original spinal cord injury.

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Industrial Robot Hones Virtual Autopsies

Getting under the skin, virtually (Image: University of Bern)

From New Scientist:

THE small industrial robot that dominates the room is in many ways much like any other. A robotic arm smoothly wields grippers and probes - always accurate and never tired. But rather than working on cars or computers, this robot is processing human corpses.

A team of forensic pathologists at the University of Bern in Switzerland reckon it could make autopsies more accurate and also less distressing for families.

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