To Steve Hyman, the manual that clinicians currently use to diagnose mental disorders is an active obstacle to getting a scientific understanding of those disorders. Hyman, who is director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute, MIT and Harvard, and a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), listed multiple weaknesses of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), whose diagnoses, he said, are “arbitrary, rigid, life-stage and context-insensitive,” as well as blind to the fact that mental disorders exist along a continuum.
From previous reports, there is evidence that cancer cells overexpress inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor-interacting protein-like 1 (ITPRIPL1) to evade the immune system and promote tumor growth. Tissue samples from patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were collected and used for studying the expression (intensity and extent) patterns of ITPRIPL1 and its diagnostic and prognostic value in this cancer type.
For individuals who develop an unexpected psychosis, there is something to be said for testing them for autoimmune antibodies. And something against. At the 36th Congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) this week, the topic was worth a controversy session, where speakers presented the pros and cons of the approach. Currently used tests have a specificity of 99%. But as Ester Coutinho, consultant neurologist at the University of Coimbra, pointed out, the validity of diagnostic tests depends on the prevalence of the disorder one is looking for as well. Coutinho estimated that autoimmune psychoses account for 1% of psychoses overall.
A study comprising a total of 406 subjects, including both healthy individuals (n=54) and patients with dry eye (DE) disease was performed with the aim of discovering basal tear cytokine markers for disease diagnosis and severity. Based on guidelines, patients with DE were classified as predisposed DE (pDE, n=136), mild-moderate DE (mDE, n=185), and severe DE (sDE, n=31).
Esophageal remodeling occurs during the development of eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE); syndecan-1, also known as CD138, is a cell surface marker involved in extracellular remodeling and it has been shown to be differentially expressed in tissue from patients with EoE compared to healthy esophageal tissue. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers conducted studies to validate serum CD138 levels as a noninvasive tool for the diagnosis of EoE.
The role that mitochondrial inner membrane protein (IMMT) has in regards to clinicopathology and tumor microenvironment in breast cancer in unclear. IMMT is part of the mitochondrial contact site and cristae organizing system (MICOS) and its function is to maintain mitochondrial integrity.
The occurrence of acute ischemic stroke impacts the immune landscape in the lungs, leading to peripheral immune activation, which can contribute to cerebral reperfusion injury.
Medi-Globe GmbH, in conjunction with the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire (IHU) in Strasbourg, France, is developing new artificial intelligence (AI) software for the detection of pancreatic disease. The Rohrdorf Germany-based company just completed a first-in-human trial of this AI tool during an endoscopic ultrasound examination performed at the Institute of Image-Guided Surgery at IHU.
Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco have developed a method to diagnose any known pathogen from any body fluid within a day – or, depending on the sequencing method, within a few hours. For an unknown pathogen, the method spits out its nearest known relative.