https://medicalxpress.com/biomedical-technology-news/ en-us Latest medical news and research in Laboratory medicine 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 Pertussis, or whooping cough, continues to cause periodic outbreaks worldwide and can be especially dangerous for infants who have not completed vaccination. Yet conventional surveillance depends on people seeking medical care, being tested, diagnosed and reported, which can delay recognition of changes in community transmission. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-wastewater-early-pertussis-outbreaks.html Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:40:06 EDT news706956995 Two major international Peter Mac-led studies have found AI models were just as good as human pathologists at a task that predicts outcomes for patients with breast cancer. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-ai-human-pathologists-breast-cancer.html Wed, 26 Aug 2026 09:40:08 EDT news706954271 A new multi-institutional study led by researchers at Dartmouth Health and Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth suggests that alpha-gal syndrome, a tick-borne disease that can result in a chronic allergy to meat and animal byproducts, also may complicate certain patients' ability to safely receive a blood plasma or platelet transfusion. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-additional-transfusion-emerges-patients-borne.html Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:00:05 EDT news706878721 Kidney disease is silent in its early stages, progressing without symptoms until the disease is advanced. Researchers in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, in collaboration with researchers at WashU Medicine and Texas A&M University, have been developing a minimally invasive method to improve diagnosis at earlier stages. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-painless-microneedle-patch-kidney-disease.html Tue, 25 Aug 2026 11:20:13 EDT news706869721 A research team at Kumamoto University has developed a blood-based approach that could help detect breast cancer recurrence by looking beyond conventional genetic mutations and examining how DNA is packaged inside cells. The study, published in Cancer Research Communications, analyzed cell-free DNA (cfDNA)—tiny DNA fragments circulating in the bloodstream—from 150 breast cancer samples, including 105 from primary breast cancer and 45 from recurrent or metastatic disease. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-blood-breast-cancer-recurrence.html Mon, 24 Aug 2026 11:00:09 EDT news706784294 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared an innovative blood test for marketing. The test's underlying technology was invented at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. The test, known as PrecivityAD2, was developed and validated by C2N Diagnostics, a WashU startup. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-fda-blood-aid-alzheimer-disease.html Mon, 24 Aug 2026 07:00:02 EDT news706765741 A new study has found platelets kept in cold storage are as effective at treating bleeding and have a longer shelf life than platelets stored at room temperature. Dr. James Preuss and Dr. Warren Pavey, from The University of Western Australia's Medical School, were co-authors of the study published in JAMA that could make platelets used in cardiac surgery more readily available in Australia. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-cold-storage-platelets-safe-effective.html Sat, 22 Aug 2026 08:00:01 EDT news706275568 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized Aletta as the first standalone robotic device that can draw blood from a patient's arm. Marketing authorization was granted to Vitestro. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-fda-authorizes-standalone-robotic-device.html Fri, 21 Aug 2026 23:00:01 EDT news706528985 Researchers at the University of Cologne, University Hospital Cologne and the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research have developed a method that, for the first time, enables damage to individual cells to be precisely quantified. The method uses molecular markers—specifically gene expression—and enables detailed analysis of disease progression in individual tissue samples, such as a biopsy. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-gene-markers-quantify-individual-kidney.html Fri, 21 Aug 2026 14:40:03 EDT news706537561 Iron deficiency is one of the world's most common nutritional disorders, affecting millions of women and children globally. Yet diagnosing it remains difficult in many low-resource settings, where access to laboratories and trained health care workers is limited. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-rapid-iron-treatment-worldwide.html Thu, 20 Aug 2026 19:00:03 EDT news706445076 Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues from the N.N. Petrov National Medical Research Center of Oncology have identified proteomic markers for monitoring liver injury and confirmed the hepatoprotective effects of plant polyphenols. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-mouse-reveals-candidate-proteins-liver.html Wed, 19 Aug 2026 15:40:04 EDT news706372681 At the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukraine was hit with a 40% surge in demand for blood for its civilians and military personnel. Despite damaged health care facilities, supply chain disruptions and population displacement, the country maintained a self-sufficient blood supply by centralizing operations and expanding donor recruitment, according to a new international study that included scientists from Northwestern University. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-ukraine-wartime-blood.html Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:20:05 EDT news706293541 A blood test that measures how quickly tumor cells divide could in the future help doctors assess prognosis and select treatment strategies for patients with melanoma that has spread to other parts of the body. This is shown in a study involving researchers from Karolinska Institutet, published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-blood-treatment-metastatic-melanoma.html Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:20:07 EDT news706275551 A simple new method based on the results of two studies from Christofer Juhlin's research group can make it easier to identify the underlying cause of a common form of high blood pressure and help predict who will benefit most from surgery. The approach has now moved from research into routine patient care at Karolinska University Hospital. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-diagnosis-primary-aldosteronism.html Tue, 18 Aug 2026 10:40:04 EDT news706267757 One of the major challenges in glioma surgery is that tumor boundaries are often difficult to define. Diffuse gliomas can infiltrate surrounding brain tissue beyond what surgeons can see directly or what conventional imaging can fully resolve. During surgery, neurosurgeons must remove as much tumor as possible while preserving critical brain functions. This makes accurate intraoperative assessment of tumor infiltration essential for more precise surgical decision-making. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-ultra-glioma-margins-3d-minutes.html Mon, 17 Aug 2026 15:00:01 EDT news706196041 Researchers searching for genetic clues to the growing problem of malaria drug resistance have identified new mutations associated with the parasite's decreased susceptibility to current treatment. By sequencing the whole genomes of malaria parasites from the blood of hundreds of infected people in Uganda, a team of researchers led by scientists at Brown University found that a cluster of genetic variants in some parasites showed significantly decreased susceptibility to the drugs most commonly used to treat malaria in Africa and the United States. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-fast-malaria-parasite-mutations-uganda.html Mon, 17 Aug 2026 05:20:01 EDT news705857635 Artificial intelligence has designed viruses that can infect bacteria and reproduce—a first that shows AI is beginning to do more than analyze the genetic code of living things. It can write new versions of it, too. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-scientists-functioning-virus-ai.html Sun, 16 Aug 2026 17:40:01 EDT news705678370 Nian Sun, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern, has spent years perfecting a device that he believes could change the way diseases are detected. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-exhaled-reveal-sars-cov-virus.html Fri, 14 Aug 2026 07:50:03 EDT news705910079 Blood biomarkers may make it possible to detect changes seen in Alzheimer's disease without advanced brain imaging or cerebrospinal fluid tests. At the same time, much of the research behind today's biomarkers has been conducted in high-income countries and among people of European ancestry. Previous studies in African populations have mainly examined a smaller number of already established markers. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-alzheimer-protein-patterns-vary-populations.html Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:40:02 EDT news705839881 Researchers have developed a novel AI model that can analyze a routine whole-slide histopathology image and simultaneously predict cancer subtype, specific genetic mutations and survival outcomes across 32 different solid cancers rather than focusing on a single cancer type. The findings from the study in The American Journal of Pathology highlight the potential of computational pathology to connect routine diagnostic imaging with molecular oncology. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-ai-accurately-key-gene-mutations.html Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:20:13 EDT news705841762 A cancerous tumor is not a single enemy. It is made up of many different cell populations that can behave in very different ways. Among them, even at the time of diagnosis, there may already be cells that months or years later could give rise to metastases or become resistant to treatment. The challenge is that these critical cell populations are extremely difficult to detect in time. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-ai-tumor-cells-seed-metastases.html Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:20:01 EDT news705763852 As cases of the potentially deadly drug-resistant fungal infection Candida auris have spread to 27 states, including Texas, which has the second-highest number, a scientist at UT Health San Antonio, the academic health center of The University of Texas at San Antonio, warns that strains resistant to frontline antifungal medications are becoming an increasingly urgent global problem. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-candida-auris-scientist-highlights-threat.html Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:20:04 EDT news705763790 If you see a doctor regularly, chances are you have had a lipid panel ordered and your blood drawn at a lab. The results told your physician your levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, factors that play a role in diagnosing conditions such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Now, a team led by Wei Gao, a professor in Caltech's Cherng Department of Medical Engineering, has developed a stick-on patch capable of gathering the same lipid measurements by analyzing sweat. And it can do so not just once but continuously. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-sensor-enables-noninvasive-cholesterol.html Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:20:01 EDT news705765645 A single blood test could in the future provide a more comprehensive picture of cancer than current methods. In a review article published in the journal Genome Medicine, researchers at Karolinska Institutet describe how several different biological signals can be analyzed simultaneously from the same blood sample to detect and monitor cancer diseases. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-blood-cancer.html Tue, 11 Aug 2026 15:20:08 EDT news705671278 In Alzheimer's disease, amyloid plaques form in the brain, followed by threadlike structures made of the protein tau. Both changes have toxic effects on the brain's nerve cells years before dementia symptoms appear. Historically, diagnosis has primarily relied on cognitive changes, which manifest at a later stage of the disease. Biomarker-based diagnostics were initially limited to specialized clinics capable of performing cerebrospinal fluid sampling or PET scans. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-broader-panel-protein-markers-blood.html Tue, 11 Aug 2026 11:40:05 EDT news705666482 A tumor is more than its cancer cells. Immune cells, blood vessels and other surrounding tissue influence how a cancer grows and responds to treatment. Two tumors containing the same cell types can respond very differently to the same therapy depending on how those cells are arranged. Spatial proteomics captures this organization in molecular detail, but the resulting data, which contain many different variables, are difficult to interpret and compare across studies. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-ai-tumor-tissue-cancer.html Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:00:04 EDT news705592621 Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a new method for diagnosing lung cancer: a simple, fast, low-cost blood test that does not require DNA sequencing. The method identifies a chemical fingerprint of cancer cells in the blood by analyzing cell-free DNA originating from those cells. In the study, the test distinguished between lung cancer patients and healthy individuals with a sensitivity of 93.1% and a specificity of 90.3% for patients with stage 2–4 disease. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-simple-blood-chip-lung-cancer.html Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:20:03 EDT news705584281 For people with lymphoma, getting the right diagnosis can be a race against time. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-blood-lymphoma-diagnosis-resource-limited.html Mon, 10 Aug 2026 07:00:05 EDT news705561478