A blood test was recently developed that may detect Parkinson’s disease years before it sets in, according to The Guardian:
To develop the test, scientists at UCL and the University of Göttingen used a machine learning algorithm to spot a signature pattern of eight blood proteins in patients with Parkinson’s. The algorithm was then able to predict future Parkinson’s in other patients who provided blood samples. In one patient, the disorder was correctly predicted more than seven years before symptoms arose. ‘It is possible that it could go back even further,’ said Dr Jenny Hällqvist, at the UCL Institute of Neurology, and first author on the study published in Nature Communications.
Prof Roger Barker, a consultant neurologist who specializes in Parkinson’s at the University of Cambridge and Addenbrooke’s hospital, said if validated by other groups, the test raised the possibility of diagnosing Parkinson’s at the very earliest stages, enabling patients to be enrolled in clinical trials when the disease process had just begun.
Parkinson’s disease afflicts more than one million people in the United States. This blood test can detect who will develop Parkinson’s up to seven years before symptoms of the disease show up. The test is designed to work on equipment already found in many medical labs. After it is tested on a broader population of patients, it could become available in England within two years.
Right now, there are no drugs to protect the brain from Parkinson’s, but a test like this would make it possible for clinics to identify patients who would benefit most from clinical trials of treatments that aim to slow the disease or halt degeneration of people with it.
Before this test can become available in the U.S., it will have to be approved by the FDA, which can be very slow in approving useful medical tests. The FDA didn’t approve a home test for HIV until 24 years after it first received an application. According to an FDA advisory committee, the test held “the potential to prevent the transmission of more than 4,000 new HIV infections in its first year of use alone.” That means thousands of people likely got infected with AIDS as a result of the FDA’s delay in approving it. As Roger Parloff of Fortune noted, the FDA’s delay in approving the home HIV test is a “scandal.” It likely caused the deaths of thousands of people, given the mortality rate from AIDS.
In other news, a new blood test can detect which bowel cancer patients can receive lifesaving immunotherapy rather than chemotherapy, enabling them to be cancer free after surgery.
Earlier, a blood test was developed that can detect many brain cancers that doctors previously wouldn’t detect until it was too late to save the victim.
Scientists have developed tiny robots made of human cells to repair damaged cells. Nanorobots are also being used to fight cancer. “In a major advancement in nanomedicine, Arizona State University scientists…have successfully programmed nanorobots to shrink tumors by cutting off their blood supply.”
Last year, doctors used a surgical robot to carry out incredibly complicated spinal surgery. They also did the first robotic liver transplant in America.
Artificial intelligence is now developing highly-effective antibodies to fight disease. Doctors overseas are using artificial intelligence to detect cases of breast cancer more effectively.
