Each day, I see people arrive for work after they have had breakfast at home. They sometimes arrive with coffee. Within two hours or so they go to morning break and eat a muffin, fruit, or some other snack, often with more coffee. Two hours later they have lunch, and so on. Our days are one long glucose tolerance test. Yet we require that ...

With so many new technologies emerging in recent years, trying to combine multiple advances can be challenging, especially when those advances haven’t been standardized yet. In a recent article from Newswise, doctors and researchers from both the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School discussed “a new problem in the delivery of personalized ...

The handheld testing application has always been something I’ve only ever imagined as a bad plot device in science fiction. For researchers at Columbia University’s The Flu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, it was apparently much, much more than that. A recent news briefing from Dark Daily announced the introduction of a ...

A story from Medical News Today noted that a variant of the gene ApoE, ApoE4, is carried in 15 to 20 percent of Americans, putting them at increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. In a study from PLOS ONE, lead author Natalie Rasgon, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University’s School of Medicine ...

Since the success of the Human Genome Project, scientists and researchers have been working towards rapid DNA sequencing. While routine genetic sequencing in clinical environments remains a technology of the future, a recent news briefing from DarkDaily followed researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of ...

It’s difficult not to get excited about the prospect of genetic medicine, but as the results of research into genetics and personalized medicine continue to soar, so do the prices of disease-treating drugs. A recent story on NPR detailed the history behind Kalydeco, a newly released treatment for cystic fibrosis ...

It turns out the gym rats were right – it’s all about the protein. Maybe not anything found in our energy bars, supplements or shakes, but rather the protein found in our biological makeup.  A research team at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota hasn’t necessarily found the key to eternal youth, but they seem to have taken some ...

In a time of transition in the field of medical research, focus is shifting towards big data analytics. While the notion of information so dense it can’t be processed using traditional applications is intimidating, a DarkDaily news release noted “at least one data scientist” that considers it to be the future in genomic medicine. Previous ...

The laboratory is often blamed for things, the dog at day’s end that gets kicked. Judge and jury often work outside our doors and call to inform us of the sentence. “The lab did it!” in other words. We’re left like a Peanuts character sighing in exasperation. For example, an office nurse called to tell me our result was wrong because we had ...

It was not very long ago that I heard “What’s the band count?” It seemed commonplace for surgeons to decide to operate on the basis of them. ED physician assistants and doctors waited for them, too. And don’t get me started on pediatricians. In the laboratory, we saw (and continue to see) enormous variation in counting and reporting band ...