New Nanoparticle Could Provide Simple Early Diagnosis Of Many Diseases 62
Researchers have created a new nanoparticle that could someday act as a virtually all-purpose diagnostic tool to detect many inflammatory diseases in their earliest stages, including heart disease, Alzheimer's, and arthritis. The specially-designed nanoparticles seek out hydrogen peroxide (thought to be overproduced in trace amounts in the early stages of most diseases that involve some sort of chronic inflammation in the body), and emit light when they encounter it.
Finally a foolproof test (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Finally a foolproof test (Score:5, Funny)
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so (Score:5, Funny)
Ever seen a girl with a real post-orgasmic glow (Score:2)
Oh... This is
Sorry...
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My.... (Score:3, Funny)
Dear, you look radiant. (Score:4, Funny)
Cancer Test (Score:5, Funny)
2. Proclaim person has pre-cancer
3. Be right 100% of the time.
4. Profit!
I have some early detection tests too! (Score:5, Funny)
1) Heart disease: You can't fit your lardass into an airplane seat.
2) Alzheimer's: Grandma asks the name of the TV show three times within ten minutes.
3) Arthritis: You're better at DDR than Guitar Hero.
This is no good. (Score:2, Funny)
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Combine 3 memes (Score:2)
"The specially-designed nanoparticles seek out hydrogen peroxide (thought to be overproduced in trace amounts in the early stages of most diseases that involve some sort of chronic inflammation in the body), and emit light when they encounter it"
those clever scientists.... (Score:4, Funny)
We can do anything now that science has invented magic
Sounds like nonsense (Score:1)
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Re:Sounds like nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sounds like nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
Most cancers, Alzheimer's and heart disease have nothing to do with inflammation, chronic or otherwise.
Actually, atheroma [wikipedia.org], the cause (in nearly all cases) of coronary artery disease, and the single commonest cause of death in the Western world, is well established to be an inflammatory process. The process of developing atheroma is influenced by a number of risk factors (e.g. diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, smoking, obesity, family history); interestingly, rheumatoid arthritis is also a significant risk factor. It has even been hypothesised that various bacterial infections (which cause inflammation) may be a cause or risk factor for atherosclerosis, though studies looking at antibiotic treatment of these purported infections have not borne this out so far.
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New Light Source (Score:2)
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The paper uses well-established chemistry to generate light-emission. They basically have an ester (peroxalate) polymer with a fluorescent dye (a pentacene derivative). A chemical reaction with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) changes the peroxalate groups into dioxetanedione groups. This irreversible chemical reaction leads to excitation of the fluorescent dye, and hence light emission.
The hydrogen peroxide is not really the energy source for the luminescence: it is more like a catalyst tha
The actual reference... (Score:5, Informative)
In vivo imaging of hydrogen peroxide with chemiluminescent nanoparticles [nature.com] Dongwon Lee, Sirajud Khaja, Juan C. Velasquez-Castano, Madhuri Dasari, Carrie Sun, John Petros, W. Robert Taylor & Niren Murthy. Published online: 19 August 2007; doi:10.1038/nmat1983 [doi.org]
The paper describes the advantages of their nanoparticles: In the paper, they demonstrate the use of this photo-marker in live mice, and are able to image the location of hydrogen peroxide anywhere in the mouse body. An obvious question regarding the technique is the toxicity of the nanoparticles. They do not discuss this in the paper (it will probably be the subject of an upcoming study), but the particles are ester polymers, with embedded dye (a pentacene derivative). So they are not using heavy-metal nanoparticles: these are peroxalate polymers. I'm not an expert in biocompatibility, but from the chemical structure, I wouldn't expect it to be highly toxic (it probably even degrades in the body).
Obviously a detailed toxicity study would be required before use in humans. However it's possible that it could be rapidly adapted to ex-situ diagnostics (e.g. on tissue explants) and then be adapted to live in-situ imaging if/when it is determined to be safe.
chemiluminescence / in vivo imaging (Score:2)
I see you've posted several times for this discussion, and that you've actually read the paper. As you pointed out earlier, pentacene is a fluorescent dye. However, that fact is misleading since its fluorescent properties are not utilized for this application. But what can you expect from a science blurb? They also spelled ester [wikipedia.org] as esther [wikipedia.org], so I ca
What I can't wait for is (Score:4, Interesting)
It should be a simple enough function and if it terminates after a few hours everything should be okay.
That would utterly rock - no more ineffective drugs with side effects.
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'Oops, my arm just fell off. Better check on what the heck those nanobots are up to today.'
For you and Faylone and BlueZhift (Score:2)
Thyamine:
That's why I feel nanobot therapy should be restricted to the hospital in a safe environment where bots can't be screwed up by outside energy.
Faylone:
Why would this therapy damage your white blood cells?
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This of course raises the question of whether the drug companies that benefit from the current crop of drugs will stand for this. I imagine the smart ones are already working on nanoparticle based drug solutions. But truly effective drugs might not be so good for the bottom line! Nahhhh, no one would be that evil, riiiiiight?
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Re:What I can't wait for is (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sounds like MS (myelin attack) (Score:2)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Breed_(The_O
Not a tricorder.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I doubt that this would be specific enough (and of uncertain sensitivity) to be useful. How many false positives and false negatives would you get? It might end up being helpful in situations where you are looking to diagnose a suspected disease, but something this non-specific does not seem like it would be a good screening tool.
A few years back they were hawking full body (or if you were cheap partial body) CT scans as a screen. The brochures would show you the 38 year old mother of two whose renal cell carcinoma was detected and removed when it was 1cm in size, thus saving her life. They did not show you the guy who had a nodule detected on CT that looked suspicious, required a biopsy that caused a pneumothorax requiring a chest tube, that caused him to have a pneumonia with empyema, which caused respiratory failure, which caused him to be intubated for two weeks, needing a tracheostomy, etc.... to diagnose the totally benign lesion he had since he was born.
I wouldn't bet on this as the medical tricorder they are making it out to be.
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The paper [nature.com] goes into details of sensitivity and specificity. With regard to sensitivity they state:
With regard to selectivity, they emphasize:
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You are talking about something entirely different. When you talk about the sensitivity and specificity of a medical test that refers only to ratios of true/false positives/negatives. The sensitivity is 'of people who have the disease, how many will have a
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Take for example an HIV test that is 99.9% specific and 100% sensitive. That is, of 1000 positives, 999 are true positives. Sounds like a good test, right?
Well it depends....
Use the test
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But don't tell me somebody have been using CT for screening - was that in the US ?
I live in Denmark where there was a minor debate a couple of years ago regarding screening mid-aged women for brest cancer. Your exact argument was the primary reason a lot of doctors opposed the idea. But even if they use X-ray for screening it's nowhere near as risky as doing full body CT. And the primary proponent of th
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Its not that screening is a bad idea. Its that BAD screening is a bad idea. Medical screening (like for hypertension, diabetes, obesity, depression, alcoholism, certain types of cancer like cervical, breast, colon, domestic violence, etc) is a GREAT idea and has saved the lives of millions. However, for a test to be a valid and good screening test, it much meet some very specific criteria. The ultimate
h2o2 is beneficial (Score:2)
hydrogen peroxide (thought to be overproduced in trace amounts in the early stages of most diseases that involve some sort of chronic inflammation in the body)
I wouldn't say that it's "overproduced". Seems that the body creates hydrogen peroxide as a way to deal with certain problems. See The Many Benefits of Hydrogen Peroxide [educate-yourself.org], or Intravenous Hydrogen Peroxide Therapy [med-library.net].
Next step (Score:2)
Proctologists will discover... (Score:1)
Don't worry baby (Score:2)