Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, Marta Cerruti, an Associate Professor in McGill’s Department of Materials Engineering, and her team analyzed damaged heart valves from patients who had undergone transplants. Their findings, recently published in Acta Biomaterialia, show considerable differences in the mineral deposits found in aortic valves of men…
Scientists in Texas and Pennsylvania have identified a protein sensor that restricts how much sugar and fat our cells convert into energy during periods of starvation. It is possible, the scientists say, that the sensor could be fine-tuned to prompt more sugar and fat conversion in people with metabolic conditions such as diabetes, obesity and…
Several tests have been developed for detecting the genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19, but these generally only allow detection of the virus during acute infection. Antibody, or serological, tests are urgently needed to determine the real rate of infection, to understand individuals’ antibody responses to the virus, and to identify people…
Responding to a looming global shortage of ventilators, a team from Oregon Health & Science University has come up a low-cost version that can be widely produced with 3D printing technology. Albert Chi, M.D., M.S.E., an OHSU trauma surgeon who previously pioneered 3D-printed prosthetics for children, is leading the effort. As COVID-19 spread inexorably across…
New research finds a connection between destructive white blood cells and a more severe disease course in patients with COVID-19. “We found that patients with COVID-19 infection have higher blood levels of neutrophil extracellular traps, also called NETs, which are a product of an inflammatory type of neutrophil cell death called NETosis,” says first author…
OKLAHOMA CITY – OU Medicine, the OU Health Sciences Center and the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation collaborated to create a new test for COVID-19 using technology and reagents from Fluidigm Corporation, an innovative biotechnology tools provider. The test is intended for large-scale testing of patients across the OU Medicine healthcare system, with the capacity to…
Engineers at UC Riverside’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering have received a $600,000 grant from the National Institute of Justice to develop a test kit that can rapidly identify body fluids at crime scenes. Existing tests to detect body fluids are not very sensitive and consume relatively large amounts of the sample. They…
Computed tomography scans for people at risk for lung cancer lead to earlier diagnoses and improve survival rates, but they can also lead to overtreatment when suspicious nodules turn out to be benign. A study published in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine indicates that an artificial intelligence strategy can correctly assess and…