DiagnoCure, Inc., a Quebec life sciences company that develops and commercializes high value cancer diagnostic tests, announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Gen-Probe’s PROGENSA® Prostate Cancer Antigen 3 (PCA3) assay. The PROGENSA PCA3 assay is indicated for use in conjunction with other patient information to aid in the decision for repeat biopsy in men 50 years of age or older who have had one or more previous negative prostate biopsies and for whom a repeat biopsy would be recommended by a urologist based on the current standard of care. A negative PROGENSA PCA3 assay result is associated with a decreased likelihood of a positive biopsy.

Millions of healthy people, including shy or defiant children, grieving relatives, and people with fetishes, may be wrongly labeled as mentally ill by a new international diagnostic manual, specialists have said. In an analysis of an upcoming revision of the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychologists, psychiatrists, and other experts said new categories of mental illness identified in the book were at best “silly” and at worst “worrying and dangerous.” “Many people who are shy, bereaved, eccentric, or have unconventional romantic lives will suddenly find themselves labeled as mentally ill,” said Peter Kinderman, head of Liverpool University’s Institute of Psychology at a briefing in London about widespread concerns over the manual. “It’s not humane, it’s not scientific, and it won’t help decide what help a person needs.” More than 11,000 health professionals have already signed a petition (at dsm5-reform.com) calling for the development of the fifth edition of the manualtobehaltedandre-thought.

Data from a clinical trial of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients treated with stem cell technology reveals that the therapy has proven safe without causing significant side effects. Patients in the trial were transplanted with stem cells derived from their own bone marrow and treated with BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics’s NurOwn stem cell therapy. The initial phase of the study is designed to establish the safety of NurOwn and will later be expanded to assess efficacy.

British scientists revealed that teaching autistic children how to develop inner speech skills might help them cope with daily tasks later in life. A study that was conducted by researchers at Durham, Bristol and City University London and published in the Development and Psychopathology journal involved 15 adults with high-functioning autism and 16 neurotypical adults for comparison. The volunteers were asked to complete a test of planning ability for which typical people would normally use “thinking in words” strategies. When the two groups were asked to do the task while also repeating outloudacertainword,suchas“Tuesday” or “Thursday” designed to distract them, the control group found the task much harder, while the autistic group were not bothered by the distraction. This study suggests that unlike neurotypical adults, participants with autism do not normally use inner speech to help themselves plan. These results also suggest that children with autism may do better at school if they are encouraged to learn their daily timetable verbally rather than using visualplans,whichiscurrentlyacommon approach.

US health regulators approved a drug called Voraxaze from British specialty drugmaker, BTG Plc that helps cancer patients get rid of toxic levels of methotrexate. Prolonged exposure to methotrexate chemotherapy treatment can cause kidney and liver damage, skin rash and severe mouth sores, damage to the lining of the intestines, and death because of low blood counts. In a clinical trial of 22 methotrexate patients, Voraxaze eliminated 95% of methotrexate from their blood. For ten of the patients, the methotrexate fell to a low level within 15 minutes and stayed that way for eight days, the FDA said. Common side effects included low blood pressure, headaches, nausea, and vomiting.

A new genome-sequencing machine from IonTorrent,adivisionofLifeTechnologies Corp. located in Connecticut, is 1,000 times more powerful than existing technology and is close to offering a read-out of a person’s complete genetic information for only $1,000. Taking up about as much space as an office printer, it can sequence an entire genome in a single day rather than six to eight weeks required only a few years ago. Ion Torrent will sell the tabletop machine, called the Ion Proton Sequencer, for $99,000 to $149,000, making it affordable for large medical practices or clinics; existing sequencers cost up to $750,000. The company has signed on Baylor College of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, and the Broad Institute as its first customers.

About 90% of American adults consume too much salt and the leading culprit is not potato chips or popcorn but slices of bread and dinner rolls, revealed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC said that 40% of salt consumed can be linked to 10 types of foods: bread and rolls lead the list followed by cold cuts and cured meat, pizza, poultry, soups, sandwiches, cheese, pasta dishes, meat dishes, and snacks such as pretzels and potato chips. Bread may not have much salt in a single serving, but when eaten several times a day, it can significantly contribute to salt intake considering a single slice of white bread may contain as much as 230 mg of salt. The CDC recommended eating more fruits and vegetables and carefully reading the labels on food products to find those with the lowest salt content.

Before treatment, a 51-year-old graphic artist suffering from Stargardt’s disease, the most common form of macular degeneration in young patients was legally blind. Another 78-year old patient suffering from dry macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the elderly could not see well enough to go shopping. After being treated with stem cells from a donated human embryo, both of these patients improved dramatically. A week after treatment, the graphic artist could count fingers, and after one month she could read the top five letters on the eye chart. She can see more color and contrast, has started using her computer, and for the first time in years can read her watch and thread a needle. The macular degeneration patient recently went to the mall for the first time in years. These results represent the first medical use of stem cells taken from human embryos, making them crucial barometers of whether the controversial technique will find widespread therapeutic uses.

There is good news for the >27,000 people around the world who donate a kidney each year. A study led by Dr. Amit Garg at Lawson Health Research Institute followed living kidney donors for ten years and found that they were at no greater risk for heart disease than the healthy general population. The study involved 2,028 Ontarians who donated a kidney between 1992 and 2009, and 20,280 healthy non-donors for comparison. “We manually reviewed the medical charts of over 2,000 living kidney donors in Ontario and linked this information to universal healthcare databases to reliably follow major cardiovascular events,” says Dr. Garg. Despite reduced kidney function in the donors, the researchers found that donors had a lower risk of death and heart disease compared to non-donors. According to an accompanying editorial by researchers at the University of Michigan, the study resolves the uncertainty that persists about the full extent of risks assumed by living kidney donors and makes an important contribution to our understanding of the long-term consequences of living kidney donation.