disease

Breakthrough heart scan leads to early diagnosis

Magnetometers are typically associated with large-scale projects such as digging for oil, locating submerged objects, and detecting archaeological sites from spacecraft. But now, with unprecedented sensitivity to magnetic fluctuations, a prototype being developed at the University of Leeds could greatly improve the diagnosis of cardiac conditions.

"The new system gets round previous difficulties by putting the actual detector in its own magnetic shield," says University of Leeds Professor Ben Varcoe, who is leading the research team.

Using a magnetometer to examine the cardiovascular health of humans has, up until now, been expensive and complicated, and has required containing … Read more

Killing me softly with your TV screen

The other day I wrote about devices such as Philips' DirectLife being valuable precisely because they remind us that even the most basic physical activity is good for our health. That was a sort of silver lining way to put it. Now, a harder truth.

New research out of Australia published this week in Circulation, the Journal of the American Heart Association, finds that every hour of TV watching--or being sedentary at all--increases one's risk of dying younger from cardiovascular disease (CD).

Researchers tracked the lifestyle habits of 8,800 adults, interviewing 3,846 men and 4,954 women … Read more

Disease-detecting device vibrates with potential

For centuries, humans have looked for signs of diseased tissue and organs by tapping the outside of the body to measure stiffness. Obviously such a method is only so effective, especially when trying to evaluate someone's liver, say, or heart. And more modern biopsies, while highly effective, are invasive procedures that involve removing tissue for examination.

Since 2007, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., have been working with magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), a medical imaging technique developed to non-invasively diagnose and monitor disease.

The device they use, MR-Touch, uses low-frequency sound waves for just 15 seconds at … Read more

Paul Allen diagnosed with cancer

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has been diagnosed with cancer, according to a memo sent on Monday to employees of Vulcan, Allen's company.

Allen, who is a survivor of Hodgkin's disease, has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, according to Vulcan CEO Jody Allen, who is also Paul Allen's sister.

Jody Allen's memo, which was also sent to the media:

To employees of Vulcan and affiliates:

I want to let you know that Paul was recently diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

He received the diagnosis early this month and has begun chemotherapy. Doctors say he has diffuse … Read more

Want to steer clear of H1N1? Get off the couch

When my husband came down with H1N1 a few weeks back, I was certain I'd get it. As he sweat through a fever that climbed to almost 104 degrees, I took care of him, slept 10 hours a night, and didn't leave the house so as not to spread the virus. And yet the only fever I felt was of the cabin variety.

I thought I'd somehow avoided the highly contagious strain of influenza, but new research indicates that, thanks to my daily habit of biking and/or climbing, I may have gotten away with a barely … Read more

Showers may be far dirtier than we think

As if we didn't already have enough germs and toxins to deal with in our home environments (the lead in our paint; flame retardants in our furniture; indoor air quality and even the resulting air purifiers; to name a few), we now get to fret over another perpetrator: the showerhead.

Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have just published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finding that about 30 percent of the showerheads in nine cities (including New York, Chicago, and Denver) carry "significant" levels of Mycobacterium avium, a pathogen … Read more

World's smallest neurostimulator gets green light

A 67-year-old man who has suffered from Parkinson's disease since his early 40s has become the first person in the world to be implanted with the Brio neurostimulator, which St. Jude Medical says has just earned CE Mark approval (CE stands for Conformite Europeenne).

Weighing in at just 1 ounce and measuring a mere 10 millimeters thick, the Brio is the smallest, longest-lasting rechargeable deep brain stimulator (DBS) that aims to treat the symptoms of Parkinson's in the world, according to its creator. One battery is supposed to survive a decade of recharging.

"Deep brain stimulation therapy … Read more

iPhone app tracks swine flu outbreaks

I'm writing this from under the covers. I mean, I know swine flu is going to get us all eventually, but I didn't know there were reported cases just 35 miles from where I live. Thank you, Outbreaks Near Me!

OK, I don't mean to make light of a very serious health issue, but this app kinda gives me the heebie-jeebies.

In a nutshell, Outbreaks Near Me lets you track--and even report--outbreaks of infectious diseases, including H1N1 (aka swine flu).

Created by Children's Hospital Boston and MIT Media Lab, it taps data provided by HealthMap, an … Read more

Facebook app lets Intel PCs donate processor power

Can't donate your personal time to a good cause? Intel is providing what may be the next best option.

Intel teamed up with GridRepublic on Monday to launch a Facebook application that allows the spare processing power in a PC to be used to fight diseases and study climate change.

The massive amount of data crunching necessary for high level research is often extremely expensive or not readily available--or both. Intel's solution is Progress Thru Processors, a computing application built on the Facebook platform that allows people to donate their PC's available data processing capacity to research … Read more

Why I worry that landlines are endangered

What I'm about to say may make me seem like a Luddite or curmudgeon, but I'm disturbed by the news that an increasing number of Americans are reachable only by wireless phones.

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than 20 percent of American homes have only cell phones and another 14.5 percent of homes received all or almost all calls via cell phones even though they had a landline. The CDC says that it's the largest six-month increase in reliance on cell phones since it started the survey … Read more