Cancer detector in the works
A small, cheaply produced device could hold the key to detecting cancer at its earliest and most curable stage, developers say.
Graduate students say they have created an acoustic sensor aimed at detecting minute amounts of mesothelin, a molecule associated with several cancers, in blood samples. But they stress that real-life applications are still a ways off.
“We’re still at an early stage. This is just past the proof-of-concept stage,” said Anthony J. Dickherber, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in bioengineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “Once this tool is fully developed, it probably will be most useful to clinical laboratories. We’re trying to create a very cost-effective, disposable test that can detect very small amounts of a target in a very noisy medium — a blood sample — where you have parts per billion or parts per trillion of your target amid all these things.”
Dickherber presented the findings at the American Association for Cancer Research’s International Conference on Molecular Diagnostics in Cancer Therapeutic Development, held in Atlanta.
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Setting AIDS record straight
The HIV epidemic among gay men can’t be explained by their number of sexual partners, U.S. researchers report.
More than half the new HIV infections diagnosed in the United States in 2005 were among gay men, a team at the University of Washington at Seattle noted. In addition, as many as one in five gay men living in cities may be HIV-positive.
But the sexual behaviors of gay and heterosexual men in the United States may not be as different as most people think, the researchers said. Two surveys found that most gay men have a similar rate of sex with unprotected partners compared with straight men or women.
“Just because gay men continue to have much higher levels of HIV, we can’t jump to the conclusion that that means that they are promiscuous or that prevention messages aren’t working,” said lead researcher Steven Goodreau, an assistant professor of anthropology.
One reason HIV remains epidemic among gay men is that anal sex is much more conducive to the transmission of HIV transmission than is vaginal sex, the researcher said.
“That puts gay men at much higher risk overall,” he said.
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Shorter treatment for lazy eye
A new study could be great news for children with lazy eye. British researchers say youngsters may not need to wear an eye patch 12 hours a day, as currently recommended.
Instead, wearing the patch just three to four hours a day for three months works just as well to improve sight, the new study suggests.
“Lengthy durations of daily patching, which are incredibly burdensome on the child and their parents, are clinically unnecessary,” said study co-author Merrick J. Moseley, a senior lecturer in the Department of Optometry and Visual Science at City University in London.
His team reported its findings in the Sept. 13 online edition of the British Medical Journal.
Lazy eye, or amblyopia, is caused by a disturbance to the vision pathways between the eyes and the brain, and is associated with blurred vision or crossed eyes. Studies have shown that patching can improve vision.
Although prior findings have found that patch use 12 hours a day is no better than six hours a day, many doctors have continued to prescribe more than six hours of patching daily.
In addition, the researchers found that children under 4 years of age require significantly less patching than those over 4 years. “The findings did not vary depending on the type of amblyopia — anisometropic, strabismic or combined,” Moseley said.
