https://medicalxpress.com/biomedical-technology-news/ en-us Latest medical news and research in Laboratory medicine Cytological tests are a common method of screening for cancer cells in stained cell samples. Using a microscope, pathologists examine cells collected from bodily fluids, looking for telltale signs of malignancy, like enlarged nuclei or abnormal cell shapes. Owing to their minimally invasive nature, these tests are widely used for early cancer screening and diagnosis. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-machine-cancer-cells-based.html Wed, 16 Sep 2026 17:40:07 EDT news708793561 It was mid-2020, and Patrick Varilly, a software engineer and data scientist, was stuck at home, eager to help the world navigate the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. He reconnected with Pardis Sabeti, a core institute member of the Broad Institute who was at the forefront of analyzing how the SARS-CoV-2 virus was spreading, and with Ben Fry, her longstanding collaborator and principal at Fathom Information Design, a software firm known for tackling complex data problems. Varilly had worked closely with Sabeti and Fry at MIT more than 20 years earlier. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-software-rapidly-tracks-viral-variants.html Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:20:07 EDT news708786756 A little-known chronic lung disease is silently emerging as a growing public health threat in the U.S. and around the world. Nontuberculous mycobacteria—a group of 200 known environmental bacteria found in soil and water, including household plumbing—can cause chronic, tuberculosis-like lung infections. NTM lung disease afflicts as many as 300,000 Americans a year. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-diagnosis-hard-lung-infections.html Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:00:21 EDT news708778382 To defeat multidrug-resistant superbugs, bacterial defenses must be confronted wherever they may emerge, from basic genetic mutations in a laboratory to complex real-world transmission in hospital rooms. A new trio of studies published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy and researched by the laboratory of Barry N. Kreiswirth, Ph.D., at the Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) demonstrates how an integrated approach might yet expose and overcome these diverse survival mechanisms. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-superbugs-evade-antibiotics-vulnerable-patients.html Wed, 16 Sep 2026 13:00:01 EDT news708780001 Gastrointestinal and pancreatobiliary cancers can be difficult to detect early, creating a need for practical, noninvasive approaches for early detection and risk assessment. The gut microbiome has emerged as a potential source of cancer biomarkers, offering practical opportunities for noninvasive testing, as microbial changes can be assessed in fecal samples. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-fecal-microbial-signatures-colorectal-pancreatic.html Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:20:01 EDT news708771263 King's College London spinout Algocyte has developed a small blood-testing device that connects via Bluetooth and uses AI to build a picture of an individual's health over time. The tool could be especially beneficial for patients who require regular monitoring, such as those undergoing chemotherapy, who currently rely on frequent hospital or doctor visits for blood tests. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-portable-blood-device-patient-health.html Wed, 16 Sep 2026 11:00:07 EDT news708771062 Iron deficiency is one of the most common health conditions in the world, but many people live with symptoms for months or years before receiving a diagnosis. To address this critical unmet need, the American Society of Hematology (ASH) issued new clinical guidance to improve how iron deficiency is recognized and diagnosed across key populations, including adults, young children, menstruating and pregnant individuals, and people with inflammation. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-ash-standards-iron-deficiency.html Wed, 16 Sep 2026 10:00:07 EDT news708761348 Researchers at City of Hope, one of the largest and most advanced cancer research and treatment organizations in the country, led the development of a new investigational blood test that could detect pancreatic cancer at its earliest stages, when the disease is more treatable and potentially curable. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-blood-pancreatic-cancer-earliest-stages.html Wed, 16 Sep 2026 05:00:04 EDT news708611401 Multiparametric flow cytometry—a test that is widely accessible, cost-effective and timely—can find one cancerous cell hidden among thousands of healthy cells following treatment for acute myeloid leukemia. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-leukemia-highlights-standardize.html Tue, 15 Sep 2026 15:20:03 EDT news708696763 Preeclampsia is one of the leading causes of pregnancy-related death. Even after a healthy delivery, mother and baby can go home only to show signs of a postpartum hypertensive disorder days or weeks later. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-ai-pathologists-preeclampsia-advancing-diagnosis.html Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:40:04 EDT news708688741 Scientists researching Alzheimer's disease and neurodegeneration have been playing a difficult game. Their scientific playbook has been limited by the available resources that, while capturing loads of genes, proteins and cells, have been missing something: microproteins. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-microproteins-playbook-alzheimer.html Mon, 14 Sep 2026 18:20:03 EDT news708624782 Qingyu Chen, PhD, and his team set out to study how artificial intelligence language models are adapted for medicine and found that what these models memorize can be both useful and risky. A model may retain valuable medical knowledge, but in a controlled study using real hospital records, the same fine-tuning—the added training that adapts a model to a specific task—that improved diagnostic performance also made it more likely to reproduce material it had seen during training, including sensitive patient information. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-fine-tuning-medical-ai-diagnosis.html Mon, 14 Sep 2026 08:40:10 EDT news708593462 Researchers at Vanderbilt Health, UTHealth Houston and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have identified early signs of cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic disease (CKMD) in children as young as 8 years old that potentially can be reversed with a new class of weight-loss drugs widely used by adults. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-early-blood-protein-clues-children.html Sun, 13 Sep 2026 09:00:06 EDT news708353097 Mayo Clinic researchers have found that artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled spatial analysis can identify patterns in routine pathology slides that may help clinicians identify which patients with pancreatic cancer are at greater risk of recurrence after treatment and surgery. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-ai-enabled-analysis-pathology-pancreatic.html Fri, 11 Sep 2026 13:00:02 EDT news708344041 The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) has published a new resource describing how diagnostic stewardship can improve patient outcomes, strengthen hospital quality metrics and reduce health care costs. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-resource-hospitals-business-case-diagnostic.html Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:40:09 EDT news708328022 A city's sewers say a lot about its residents. Sick people often shed pathogens in their waste, adding traceable amounts of bacteria and viruses to wastewater. Testing that wastewater offers a simple, low-cost way to monitor the spread of disease—a practice that began with polio in the 1940s and became more widespread during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, the CDC's wastewater monitoring program tests for a variety of common and emerging viruses. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-sewers-reveal-chlamydia-college-campus.html Thu, 10 Sep 2026 13:20:07 EDT news708264602 The way two mpox virus proteins change shape as they bind together acts like a switch that starts the process of viral replication, a study led by researchers at the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School reveals. This kind of detailed structural information promises to help scientists, armed with a new generation of AI-powered virtual screening tools, target their search for ways to inhibit viral replication, treat mpox and related diseases, and prepare for emerging pathogens. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-protein-shift-reveals-mpox-virus.html Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:00:02 EDT news708258095 Researchers from Queen Mary University of London, the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) and Genomics England have shown that measuring proteins in the blood can provide important additional clues about the effects of genetic variants, helping to identify diagnoses and potential new disease-causing genes that genome sequencing alone has been unable to resolve. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-blood-protein-analysis-rare-diseases.html Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:00:06 EDT news708178647 A new blood-based screening algorithm dramatically reduced the number of unnecessary PET scans needed to recruit patients at risk of Alzheimer's disease for a clinical trial, according to research from scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of USC published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-algorithmic-tool-screening-patients-alzheimer.html Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:00:07 EDT news708002941 The strain of mpox behind the 2022 outbreak was a weakened form of the virus, which may have helped it spread faster, a new study from the University of Surrey reports. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, show that the virus acquired mutations before it spread globally. These mutations, which are absent from forms of the virus currently circulating in parts of Africa, cause less severe symptoms in patients, who may have unknowingly spread the virus across borders. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-mpox-outbreak-severe-virus-reveals.html Tue, 08 Sep 2026 17:20:07 EDT news708105182 The current outbreak of Bundibugyo virus (BDBV) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo highlights the challenges of responding to rare but potentially devastating infectious diseases. Two studies led by researchers from the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), together with other national and international collaborators, now provide important insights for outbreak response. One study demonstrates how diagnostic tests can be evaluated rapidly during an outbreak; the other investigates the biological properties of the 2026 BDBV strain and whether an existing Ebola vaccine could offer some cross-protection. Both studies were published this month in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-responses-bundibugyo-virus-outbreaks-faster.html Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:20:09 EDT news708093961 Scientists in China have identified a novel tick-borne virus that causes an influenza-like illness characterized by fever, fatigue, gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms and abnormal lab findings. The team, led by researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity in Beijing, has designated the new orthonairovirus as the Asian longhorned tick nairovirus (ALTNV). https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-scientists-china-borne-virus-flu.html Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:00:01 EDT news707992776 In a study published in Scientific Reports, an international, multidisciplinary research team that included Binghamton University researchers identified a set of blood proteins that may explain why the corticosteroid prednisone, although beneficial in treating Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), can interfere with childhood growth and bone health. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-blood-biomarkers-reveal-common-muscular.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 13:00:03 EDT news707745541 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared the PrecivityAD2 test for adults 40 and older presenting with signs or symptoms of cognitive impairment and undergoing evaluation for Alzheimer's disease or other forms of cognitive decline. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-fda-blood-alzheimer-disease.html Thu, 03 Sep 2026 15:20:11 EDT news707657613 New research has found that more than 9 in 10 patients with bladder cancer were identified through a noninvasive urine test after urgent referral. The study, led by the University of Birmingham and Nonacus Ltd., involved 964 patients across seven NHS urology departments to examine the real-world significance of testing for bladder cancer using a commercially available urine test. GALEAS™ Bladder, which tests genomic information from a patient's urine for traces of bladder cancer, detected 71 of 77 cancers (92.2%) among the nearly 1,000 patients. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-urine-ten-bladder-cancers-clinical.html Wed, 02 Sep 2026 10:00:09 EDT news707557312 Using 3D printers to create complex structures from biocompatible materials that can include living cells has the potential to revolutionize medicine. This process—3D bioprinting—has powered breakthroughs in tissue engineering, medical implants and reconstructive surgery and may ultimately allow for the creation of transplantable human organs. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-red-health-bioprinted-tissue-implants.html Tue, 01 Sep 2026 14:20:06 EDT news707483470 Spatial transcriptomics is a powerful tool for creating a detailed map of not just how genes are expressed in a piece of tissue, but also where genetic activity takes place in different cells and locations within the tissue. This is especially valuable for studying tumors, which each have their own unique microenvironment that affects how they behave. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-tumor-floor-immunotherapy-response-current.html Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:40:07 EDT news707407382 A 13-indicator routine laboratory model shows moderate discrimination for distinguishing heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), according to a study published online Aug. 9 in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-machine-heart-failure-ejection-fraction.html Sun, 30 Aug 2026 07:40:01 EDT news707137615 Vasculitis is a disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks blood vessel walls, causing them to become inflamed. If left untreated, the rare disease can severely damage organs, including the kidneys and lungs. Physicians can treat vasculitis with immunosuppressive medications. But because these drugs often cause serious side effects, they have long sought a way to identify patients in remission to avoid treating them unnecessarily or minimize treatment regimens. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-ai-proteomics-uncover-blood-proteins.html Wed, 26 Aug 2026 15:20:08 EDT news706974122 Sepsis, a life-threatening condition that stems from the body trying to fight off an infection, plagues more than 1.5 million patients a year in the U.S. alone, with one in three deaths recorded in hospitals attributed in part to sepsis. Despite the severity of the condition, which can kill in as little as 12 hours, it takes between two and seven days for most traditional approaches to definitively identify sepsis-causing bacteria in blood infections. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-approach-sepsis-diagnosis-days-hours.html Wed, 26 Aug 2026 14:00:24 EDT news706952341