Medical Bulletin 9/February/2023

Here are the top medical news for the day:

Novel blood test to identify prostate cancer with 94 percent accuracy

New research shows that the Prostate Screening EpiSwitch (PSE) blood test is 94 per cent accurate – beating the currently used prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test.

The research team from the University of East Anglia say that the new test shows significant potential as an accurate and rapid cancer screening diagnostic.

The test was developed by Oxford Biodynamics in collaboration with UEA, Imperial College London and Imperial College NHS Trust.

Prof Dmitry Pshezhetskiy, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men and kills one man every 45 minutes in the UK.

Reference:

Dmitri Pchejetski, Ewan Hunter, Mehrnoush Dezfouli, Matthew Salter, Ryan Powell, Jayne Green, Tarun Naithani, Christina Koutsothanasi, Heba Alshaker, Jiten Jaipuria, Martin J. Connor, David Eldred-Evans, Francesca Fiorentino, Hashim Ahmed, Alexandre Akoulitchev, Mathias Winkler. Circulating Chromosome Conformation Signatures Significantly Enhance PSA Positive Predicting Value and Overall Accuracy for Prostate Cancer Detection. Cancers, 2023; 15 (3): 821 DOI: 10.3390/cancers15030821

Expert work group’s findings on what is clinically meaningful to slow Alzheimer’s progression

Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association has published an expert work group’s findings and recommendations on what is clinically meaningful to slow Alzheimer's disease progression during clinical trials, including treatment impact over time and the need for combination therapies. These are as follows:

Slowing progression of disease - rather than halting it, which may come eventually - has measurable and meaningful benefits for patients and their families, especially in early Alzheimer’s when cognition and memory are fully or mostly intact.

Reference:

Ronald Petersen et al,Expectations and clinical meaningfulness of randomized controlled trials,Alzheimer s & Dementia

Early-life adversity may affect childhood mental health and cognitive function: Study

New research published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry indicates that early-life adversity-such as homelessness, parental violence, or longstanding illness in the family-may lead to mental health challenges, which in turn have adverse consequences for the development of cognitive abilities during childhood.

In the study of 13,287 children in the UK, adversity at age 3 years was strongly associated with poorer mental health across all ages from 3 to 14 years. Also, adversity predicted poorer working memory at age 11 and vocabulary at age 14. The impact of adversity on cognition was partially due to its negative effects on mental health during development.

Reference:

Childhood mental health difficulties mediate the long-term association between early-life adversity at age 3 and poorer cognitive functioning at ages 11 and 14,Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,doi 10.1111/jcpp.13757

Potential predictor of knee osteoarthritis identified after ACL surgery

A special and intricate structure, the patellofemoral joint is made up of both static (bones and ligaments) and dynamic (moving) components (neuromuscular system). The patella is shaped like a triangle, with its point facing inferiorly. The main articulating surfaces of the patellofemoral joint, the trochlea and the distal articulating surface of the femur, are where it articulates superiorly.

Arthritis in the knee’s patellofemoral joint (PFJ) is common following anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR) and may be linked with altered loading, or stress, at the joint. In a study published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research, young adults post‐ACLR who exhibited lower PFJ loading during hopping were more likely to have PFJ osteoarthritis at 1‐year and worsening PFJ osteoarthritis between 1‐ and 5‐years.

Reference:

Patellofemoral joint loading and early osteoarthritis after ACL reconstruction,Journal of Orthopaedic Research,doi 10.1002/jor.25504