Screening the genetic material present in patients' urine could distinguish between aggressive from dormant prostate cancers, suggests a study published this month in the British Journal of Cancer. The research paper reports pilot findings from 11 prostate cancer patients and may provide new hope for the 34,000...
The effectiveness of a prenatal test for Down syndrome has been thrown into doubt after its developers, Sequenom, admitted that study data had been 'mishandled' by its employees. The company, which had been producing apparently strong results in house for its DNA and RNA blood testing products...
A link has been found between progressive hearing loss and a microRNA gene - the first time this type of gene has been implicated in any inherited disorder. The findings are the result of convergent research by scientists from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England, and...
Cell-free fetal nucleic acids - DNA or the related molecule RNA - are present in the blood. As has previously been reviewed, the discovery that a small proportion of the cell-free nucleic acids in the mother's blood during pregnancy actually comes from the fetus paved the way for new techniques to exploit...
The holy grail of prenatal diagnosis has been the identification of chromosome and single gene abnormalities through maternal blood sampling. This would allow safe accurate prenatal diagnosis, requiring much lower operator skills, and automation is potentially possible, making it cost-effective. In contrast, standard prenatal screening involves ultrasound and biochemical risk...
Antenatal care in the UK includes various forms of screening intended to assess the health of the mother and fetus; at present this includes the use of ultrasound imaging to check on physical development of the fetus, and serum screening using maternal blood to determine blood group, identify the presence...
A new study, published in the journal PLoS One, suggests that child abuse can permanently 'mark' genes in the brain, and provides evidence that early life events can affect our genes. Researchers from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, led by Moshe Szyf, examined the postmortem brains of...
An experimental treatment for boys with the inherited muscle wasting disease Duchene Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) has showed promise in human safety trials, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. In the first ever trial on humans, the new drug was shown to...
RNA interference (RNAi), a genetic therapy with huge therapeutic potential across medicine, is back on track after a paper published in Nature this week. Research into the technique - which has garnered a Nobel prize and swathes of excitable column inches - suffered a setback last year when a...
The first trial of a new treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) will start later this year in the UK. The treatment, which has been developed by using human cells and mice experiments, hopes to overcome the effects of the genetic defect that causes the muscle wasting...
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