With the emergence of a wide array of new therapies for the management of rheumatoid arthritis, not only has treatment improved markedly over the past two decades, it has also grown increasingly complex. With 10 approved biologic therapies in the United States comes a growing need for tools that can…

Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common form of physical disability in children, with an incidence rate of approximately two cases for every 1,000 live births. Historically, CP has been attributed to an array of factors such as asphyxia, stroke, and infections in the developing brains. However, researchers from The…

Exact Sciences has won FDA approval for the first noninvasive DNA screening test for colorectal cancer—the first stool-based diagnostic designed to indicate the presence of abnormal growths in red blood cells and DNA mutations, and the first test to be approved under a joint parallel review pilot program by the…

Genetic counseling services provider InformedDNA released today a white paper on genetic testing. Use of these diagnostic tests is growing rapidly, but inappropriate testing has negative consequences for individuals and the U.S. health care system, according to the company. The paper, titled Genetic Counseling: Connecting Patients to the Power of Genetics and…

Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, along with colleagues in the U.K. and Spain, report they discovered that key genetic variants may affect how cancer patients respond to radiation treatments. The research team found that variations in the TANC1 gene are associated with a greater risk…

A flood of RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data is already overwhelming existing systems for data analysis. And the waters are bound to keep rising, now that RNA-seq, the primary means of measuring gene expression, is increasingly seen as a tool not only for basic researchers, but also for medical practitioners. Particularly…

The name of one thing or another, in isolation, may seem arbitrary, as poets and artists have suggested from time to time. Scientists, however, have a different perspective. They cannot accept, as a painter once declared, that the “precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.” For scientists,…