Low-Cost Mobile Device Uses the Cloud to Speed Up Diagnostic Testing for HIV
January 28th 2013Samuel K. Sia, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, has taken his innovative lab-on-a-chip and developed a way to not only check a patient's HIV status anywhere in the world with just a finger prick, but also synchronize the results automatically and instantaneously with central health-care records10 times faster, the researchers say, than the benchtop ELISA, a broadly used diagnostic technique. The device was field-tested in Rwanda by a collaborative team from the Sia lab and ICAP at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health.
Penicillin, Not the Pill, May Have Launched the Sexual Revolution
January 28th 2013The rise in risky, non-traditional sexual relations that marked the swinging 60s actually began as much as a decade earlier, during the conformist 50s, suggests an analysis recently published by the Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Estrogen Fights Urinary Infection in Mouse Model
January 24th 2013Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found new evidence in mice that the two phenomena are connected by more than just timing. If further research confirms these links, boosting estrogen levels may get a second look as an approach for reducing urinary infections in menopausal women.
Planning for Bacteria in Cancer Patients May Help Hospitals Fight Infections
January 24th 2013What cancerous conditions lead to what kinds of bacterial infections? If doctors knew, they could predict which patients would likely benefit from pre-treatment with certain kinds of antibiotics. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in this months issue of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases shows the answer: E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae are especially prevalent in patients with lung and GI cancers, more so for Klebsiella if these patients have been treated previously with aminopenicillins.