Just How Effective Is PSA Screening?
NEW ORLEANS — Prostate cancer screening with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood testing appears to have a more favorable benefit-to-harm trade-off than originally estimated, particularly among Black men, according to research presented here. Using the most conservative assumptions about the benefits of screening, investigators found that among men of all races, one death was prevented for […]
Study gives animal testing alternatives a confidence boost
As part of a government effort to reduce animal testing, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have worked with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Inotiv Inc. to produce a new protocol for screening skin allergens. The method is potentially cheaper and faster than animal testing, while maintaining a similar […]
For Men on ADT, Checking Bone Density May Thwart Fractures
Bone density testing in older prostate cancer patients on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) was significantly associated with a decreased risk for major osteoporotic fractures, but remains little used, a prospective population-based study found. In the cohort of nearly 55,000 men treated with ADT from 2005 to 2015, those who received dual x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) screening […]
Heart Failure Patients Still Undertested for CAD
People with new-onset heart failure (HF) continued to lack adequate testing for coronary artery disease (CAD), a common and treatable cause of HF, and nationwide variations in testing rates suggested room for quality improvement across physicians and geographic regions. From a large pool of patients with incident HF in 2004-2019, just 34.8% underwent CAD testing […]
Engineers test an idea for a new hovering rover: A levitating vehicle might someday explore the moon, asteroids, and other airless planetary surfaces
Aerospace engineers at MIT are testing a new concept for a hovering rover that levitates by harnessing the moon’s natural charge. Because they lack an atmosphere, the moon and other airless bodies such as asteroids can build up an electric field through direct exposure to the sun and surrounding plasma. On the moon, this surface […]
COVID’s Assault on the Moral Fiber of Medicine
COVID-19’s fourth surge is testing the moral fiber of American medicine. The virus has infected more than 42 million Americans and claimed more than 675,000 lives in less than 2 years. Now the Delta variant is forcing us to once again face an onslaught of critically ill patients while at the same time delaying routine […]
Some Liver Transplant Patients Got Hepatitis B From Donors
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) was discovered in patients receiving liver transplants, despite donors testing negative for the virus, CDC researchers found. From 2014 to 2019, the agency received reports of 20 patients who contracted HBV after liver transplants from donors who had no evidence of prior HBV infection, according to Danae Bixler, MD, and colleagues […]