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Category: health – Page 117

In a first-of-its-kind clinical trial, bioelectronic medicine researchers, engineers and surgeons at Northwell Health’s The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research have successfully implanted microchips into the brain of a man living with paralysis, and have developed artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to re-link his brain to his body and spinal cord.

This double neural bypass forms an electronic bridge that allows information to flow once again between the man’s paralyzed body and to restore movement and sensations in his hand with lasting gains in his arm and wrist outside of the laboratory. The research team unveiled the trial participant’s groundbreaking progress four months after a 15-hour open-brain surgery that took place on March 9 at North Shore University Hospital (NSUH).

“This is the first time the brain, body and have been linked together electronically in a paralyzed human to restore lasting movement and sensation,” said Chad Bouton, professor in the Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institutes, vice president of advanced engineering at Northwell Health, developer of the technology and principal investigator of the clinical trial.

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CHICAGO — A cell-free DNA blood-based test displayed 83% sensitivity for colorectal cancer detection and 90% specificity in an average-risk population, similar to the performance of current noninvasive screening options.

“Colorectal cancer screening is recommended for everyone in the United States,” Daniel Chung, MD, director of the High-Risk GI Cancer Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School, told attendees at Digestive Disease Week. “But, despite the widespread availability of many screening options, there remain persistent and significant barriers, and unfortunately, screening rates remain suboptimal. In fact, only 59% of eligible individuals aged 45 and over are adherent, which is well below the acceptance target rate of 80%.”

He added: “A blood-based screening test that can be completed as part of a routine health care visit presents a unique and attractive opportunity to increase adherence to colon cancer screening.”

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UCLA Health researchers have published the largest-ever study of families with at least two children with autism, uncovering new risk genes and providing new insights into how genetics influence whether someone develops autism spectrum disorder.

The new study, published July 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also provides genetic evidence that language delay and dysfunction should be reconsidered as a core component of autism.

Most genetic studies of autism have focused on families with one child affected by the neurodevelopmental disorder, sometimes excluding families with multiple affected children. As a result, few studies have examined the role of rare inherited variation or its interaction with the combined effect of multiple common genetic variations that contribute to the risk of developing autism.

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There’s a lot of talk about the potential for artificial intelligence in medicine, but few researchers have shown through well-designed clinical trials that it could be a boon for doctors, health care providers and patients.

Now, researchers at Stanford Medicine have conducted one such trial; they tested an artificial intelligence algorithm used to evaluate heart function. The algorithm, they found, improves evaluations of heart function from echocardiograms — movies of the beating heart, filmed with ultrasound waves, that show how efficiently it pumps blood.

“This blinded, randomized clinical trial is, to our knowledge, one of the first to evaluate the performance of an artificial intelligence algorithm in medicine. We showed that AI can help improve accuracy and speed of echocardiogram readings,” said James Zou, PhD, assistant professor of biomedical data science and co-senior author on the study. “This is important because heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world. There are over 10 million echocardiograms done each year in the U.S., and AI has the potential to add precision to how they are interpreted.”

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NIH-funded study supports new role for nutrient found in fish, dietary supplements.

Omega-3 fatty acids, which are abundant in fish and fish oil supplements, appear promising for maintaining lung health, according to new evidence from a large, multi-faceted study in healthy adults supported by the National Institutes of Health. The study provides the strongest evidence to date of this association and underscores the importance of including omega-3 fatty acids in the diet, especially given that many Americans do not meet current guidelines. Funded largely by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of NIH, the study results were published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

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The gut microbiota is a key player in multiple facets of human health, influencing disease development and prevention. An interdisciplinary collaboration is needed to unravel its complexities and to finding potential avenues for therapeutic interventions.

Explore the following trending articles in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology and Frontiers in Gastroenterology.

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Could this be the future of medicine?

In order for chatbots to be useful to doctors and other health professionals, they are going to need access to the latest research. But current models simply don’t have access to data beyond their latest update. Daniel Nadler has been working to resolve this issue with his new startup OpenEvidence.

He plans to achieve his lofty goal by “marrying these language models with a real-time firehose of clinical documents,” Nadler told Forbes on Thursday. He claims that his new model “can answer with an open book, as opposed to a closed book.”

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As if all that isn’t enough, now doctors are saying women with PCOS need to think about their heart health as well, says Erin Michos, M.D., associate director of preventive cardiology at the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease.

“Women worry about infertility, acne and weight gain but might not be thinking of high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. It’s important to know that they’re at an increased risk and how important diet and exercise is,” says Michos.

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Reducing reliance of aninmal experimentation. 🐀

According to the team, this new unparalleled technology facilitates the precise manipulation of biological materials, enabling the creation of highly sophisticated and realistic organoids that closely mimic the complexity of the corresponding human organs.

The cutting-edge magnetic and acoustic levitation will bioprint heart models to improve protection against radiation both in space and on Earth.

After being awarded nearly 4 million euros by the European Innovation Council’s Pathfinder Open, PULSE is aiming to foster technological innovations to improve human health and pave the way for safer and more sustainable space exploration.

Multi-Levitation bioprinting and creating realistic organoids

The device, designed by PULSE, combines magnetic and acoustic levitation into an innovative bioprinting platform capable spatiotemporal control of cell deposition.

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