Latest news with #medicalresearch
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Parkinson's Disease Has a Smell That Some Dogs Can Detect
Dogs really can be trained to smell Parkinson's disease, according to new research from the United Kingdom. In a double blind trial, a Golden Retriever and a Labrador were able to sniff out which skin swabs came from people with Parkinson's. The smell of the oily secretions seemed to hold secret clues. "The dogs in this study achieved high sensitivity and specificity and showed there is an olfactory signature distinct to patients with the disease," says animal behavioral scientist Nicola Rooney from the University of Bristol. "Sensitivity levels of 70 percent and 80 percent are well above chance, and I believe that dogs could help us to develop a quick, non-invasive, and cost-effective method to identify patients with Parkinson's disease." Related: Today, there is no definitive early test for Parkinson's, which is why scientists are so interested in finding potential biomarkers of the disease on our skin. The knowledge that Parkinson's distinctly changes a person's body odor first came to light roughly a decade ago – all because of one woman. Twelve years before her husband's diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, Joy Milne could sense something was off – specifically, she could smell it. Milne, a Scottish nurse, is known as a 'super-smeller', and in 2016, she became famous among neuroscientists for her extraordinary abilities. In a small pilot study, Milne correctly identified each patient with Parkinson's disease based solely on the scent of their shirts. Her one misidentification turned out to be correct nearly a year later. The news raised an important question: If someone like Milne could smell Parkinson's years before it was diagnosed, could a dog do the same? Dogs are known to have incredible senses of smell, far more powerful than our own. Previous studies have found our pets can smell our stress, our coronavirus infections, and even our cancers – so if a distinct odor for Parkinson's does exist, then maybe a dog can sniff it out, too. In the past decade, a few preliminary trials have provided evidence for that hypothesis. But some only gave limited information on how the dogs were trained and tested. The recent trial from the UK is a collaboration between a program called Medical Detection Dogs and neuroscientists at the University of Manchester. One goal of the research is to figure out what the dogs are actually smelling, and why. In 2019, for instance, researchers at Manchester helped identify which odor compounds set the distinctive smell of Parkinson's apart. Their results were later confirmed by Milne, the serendipitous "super-smeller". A few years on, the odor compounds were used to create a diagnostic 'swab test' for Parkinson's, currently in testing. Perhaps, further down the road, trained dogs could help neuroscientists identify more unique biomarkers of the disease. The trouble is, though, not all canines are up to snuff. In the current trial, only 2 out of 10 dogs made it through training, and neither performed perfectly. One dog, for instance, falsely flagged a tenth of the odor swabs from healthy people as having Parkinson's. The other gave false alarms less than 2 percent of the time. Overall, however, the dogs could smell which person had Parkinson's at a rate well above chance, providing proof of principle. "We are extremely proud to say that once again, dogs can very accurately detect disease," says Claire Guest, the CEO of Medical Detection Dogs. "There is currently no early test for Parkinson's disease and symptoms may start up to 20 years before they become visible and persistent leading to a confirmed diagnosis. "Timely diagnosis is key… " The study was published in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease. Related News Expert Reveals What Can Happen if Testosterone Gel Rubs Onto Others Radioactive Waste Exposed Children in Missouri to Cancer Risks, Study Finds A Single Brain Scan Halfway Through Your Life Can Reveal How Fast You're Aging Solve the daily Crossword
Forbes
a day ago
- Health
- Forbes
Common Concerns About Clinical Trials—And What We Can Do About Them
Sonali Bloom is CEO of 20/20 Onsite. When people hear the term 'clinical trial,' they often imagine someone with a serious illness, desperate for a last-resort treatment, being poked and prodded in a lab. These images are persistent, but far from the truth. In my years of experience working with clinical trials, I've learned that while some of the concerns people have are valid, many are rooted in misunderstanding. These misconceptions have a significant impact on how broad and effective our clinical research can be. When we can't recruit or retain the right participants, it slows the pace of medical advancement for everyone. But the good news is that we have real, actionable ways to address these issues, starting with education and a patient-first approach to clinical trial design. Not Just For The Sick One of the most common misconceptions I hear is that trials are only for people who are seriously ill. In reality, healthy volunteers play a critical role in clinical research. Drug developers need a baseline, like a statistical 'blank slate,' to see how new treatments affect the body without the complications of an existing condition. This misconception often goes hand in hand with the belief that trials are only for those who have exhausted every other option. That narrative is just as inaccurate. Many trials are designed specifically for people at the beginning of their treatment journey. Clinical trials can offer alternatives that are less invasive or more promising, such as a pill for an ophthalmologic condition instead of injections or surgery. That alone can be a compelling reason to participate in a trial sooner, rather than later. We can't talk about hesitations around clinical trials without addressing the issue of historical distrust. In some communities, especially those that have been mistreated or exploited by the medical establishment, this skepticism is deep-rooted and understandable. But today, clinical research is one of the most highly regulated parts of healthcare. Participant safety is paramount, and researchers are required to adhere to strict protocols and uphold stringent ethical standards. Nonetheless, trust is earned, not granted. The impact of these concerns is not academic. They directly affect who participates in trials and who doesn't. Right now, trial participants tend to come from a narrow demographic, often concentrated in cities around research hubs. This lack of variety in age, background, and lived experience can lead to blind spots in treatment efficacy, safety, and applicability. Building Trust And Breaking Barriers Let's be honest: Participating in a clinical trial can be inconvenient. There may be travel involved, time away from work or family, and experimental medical procedures don't always work. But the reality is changing fast. We're seeing a wave of innovation in technology and trial design aimed at reducing patient burden. Remote monitoring, mobile clinics and at-home test kits are making participation more convenient and accessible. Why drive to a hospital when a nurse can come to you, or you can test yourself at home and log your data on a smartphone? These kinds of features are essential if we want to recruit and retain a more diverse group of participants. And for many patients, financial compensation is an added incentive. In some cases, you're essentially receiving cutting-edge care, often years before it's widely available, for free. Education is our strongest tool for getting the truth out. When people understand the purpose, value and reality of clinical research—not just for themselves, but for society—it helps normalize the process and reframes the conversation. Clinical trials are an integral part of the healthcare ecosystem. Helping people see that connection builds trust and encourages a wider swath of society to participate. The result: better outcomes on all sides. Education also helps foster a sense of gratitude. When you understand the rigorous process a drug or procedure undergoes before it reaches your pharmacy or doctor's office, you're more likely to appreciate the people who helped test and develop it. Even if the benefit of taking part in a clinical trial isn't immediate or personal, your participation could help a family member, a neighbor or someone else in your community down the line. When more people see trials in this light, we can help shift the conversation from 'Why me?' to 'Why not me?' Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Health
- Washington Post
This system is critical to Americans' health. We must defend it.
Eric J. Rubin is editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and the NEJM Group. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo is editor in chief of JAMA and the JAMA Network. When KJ Muldoon was born, he seemed healthy. But within days, doctors discovered he had a rare genetic condition that could allow toxic levels of ammonia to build up in his body, putting him at risk for brain damage or even death. The infant's doctors developed a first-of-its-kind therapy just for him, using CRISPR — a gene-editing technology that has been refined for use through decades of research and peer-reviewed science published in medical journals.
Associated Press
3 days ago
- Business
- Associated Press
DEA's Cannabis Cartel: A Federal Marijuana Scam That Sabotaged Science, Blocked Patients, and Protected Power
As thousands suffer without access to FDA-approved cannabis treatments, MMJ BioPharma Cultivation is waging a David vs. Goliath legal war against the DEA's decade-long deception -and i ncoming Administrator Terrance Cole must decide whether to continue the cover-up or finally put patients over politics. WASHINGTON, DC / ACCESS Newswire / July 20, 2025 / The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has spent nearly a decade running what amounts to a federally sanctioned scam - promising to expand marijuana research, then systematically stonewalling legitimate applicants while rubber-stamping licenses for companies that would never produce a single usable gram of medicine. This wasn't delay. This wasn't incompetence. This was intentional sabotage of the one legal pathway to bring FDA-approved cannabis treatments to patients suffering from Huntington's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and other life-altering conditions. The False Reform Narrative In 2016, DEA leaders stood before the press and announced an end to the University of Mississippi's monopoly on marijuana research. They invited new applicants, accepted blueprints, conducted facility inspections - and then shut the door. For five years, not one license was granted. When the DEA finally acted in 2021-2022, it registered eight companies. Today? A DEA Administrative Legal System Weaponized While these fraudulent paper companies were handed licenses, MMJ BioPharma Cultivation - the only applicant with a fully constructed, FDA-compliant pharmaceutical facility - was thrown into a Kafkaesque legal maze. MMJ followed every rule. They secured Orphan Drug Designation from the FDA. They prepared for human clinical trials. And the DEA responded by dragging them into an unconstitutional administrative law process - now discredited by the Supreme Court in Axon v. FTC and Jarkesy v. SEC. Presiding DEA Administrative Law Judge John Mulrooney (known to critics as Judge McLooney) even admitted the agency's handling of MMJ was 'torturous.' Yet he recommended denial of their application anyway - a move that reeked of institutional self-preservation, not justice. The Real Victims: Patients, Not Paperwork While the DEA protected its turf and shell registrants, thousands of patients were left behind. People with Huntington's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, debilitating chronic pain, and neurological disorders have no access to FDA-approved cannabis-based medications - because the DEA never allowed one to be made. Behind the curtain were bureaucrats like: They operated in secrecy, delayed applications, misled Congress, and claimed the agency 'supports science' - while real science was suffocated. David vs. Goliath: MMJ's Federal Showdown This is no longer a policy dispute - it's a battle for the future of medical cannabis, and MMJ BioPharma is David with a slingshot full of federal law. Their lawsuit against the DEA is now pulling back the curtain - revealing documents obtained via FOIA that show a deliberate pattern of obstruction, collusion, and regulatory fraud. MMJ is not just fighting for itself. It's fighting for every legitimate company, every physician, and every patient who believed the federal government when it said cannabis research would be allowed to move forward. It wasn't. A Turning Point: Terrance Cole Must Decide With DEA leadership in disarray and legal precedent shifting, a new administrator is stepping in: Terrance Cole, nominated to lead the agency into a new era. But this isn't just a personnel change - it's a reckoning. Will Cole be another bureaucrat who protects his predecessors' failures? Or will he end the charade, clean house, and finally grant registrations to those - like MMJ BioPharma - who are doing the work patients have waited years for? The Final Word: The DEA didn't just delay cannabis research. It derailed it, defrauded the public, and damaged lives. Thanks to federal court filings, investigative reporting, and companies with the courage to fight back, the whole scheme is unraveling. America doesn't need DEA permission to pursue science. It needs the DEA to get out of the way. MMJ is represented by attorney Megan Sheehan. CONTACT: Madison Hisey [email protected] 203-231-8583 SOURCE: MMJ International Holdings press release
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why MAGA hates science so much
Against all the evidence of horrific, devastating weather around us, climate change is still a 'hoax.' A measles outbreak sparked by anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists now extends beyond Texas to 34 states. Republicans are doing all they can to shut down funding for medical research. Why does MAGA hate science? Shall we count the ways? Because scientific advances don't discriminate between the 'worthy' and those considered unworthy, and because some in the billionaire class think they deserve to live much longer than you do. As they prep their fancy-shmancy bunkers or delude themselves that they can one day head off to Mars to escape their wanton destruction of the Earth, the billionaire bros know they can avail themselves and their children of lifesaving vaccinations and other health care services that they are putting out of reach for many of us. But it's not just the small — and small-minded, and small-hearted — wealthy libertarian or right-wing elite. Working people who choose to wear MAGA red caps hate science for their own reasons: It tells them things about disease and environmental destruction and, say, women's reproductive health that they cannot bear to face. Scientific findings often do not jibe with their religious beliefs. If you believe the Earth is 6,000 years old and were never taught how to distinguish between faith and knowledge, you're naturally going to have a testy relationship with science. By its nature of openness to new ideas, scientific inquiry exemplifies the secular worldview of liberals. Science levels the playing field. It's woke. Scientists discriminate about the significance of evidence, but they do not discriminate about the significance of different human beings. (That is what the MAGA faithful think their religion is for — because Republicans have spent a long time perverting Christianity, too, to justify their greed and bigotry.) From reading the writers of the Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson knew science was evening out the social playing field. In an article for Smithsonian magazine, historian Stephen E. Ambrose notes that amid all the contradictions of his personal life, Jefferson never relinquished his idealism about all men being created equal: In his last message to America, on June 24, 1826, ten days before he died on July 4 (the same day that John Adams died), Jefferson declined an invitation to be in Washington for the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He wrote, 'All eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them.' There's the danger to those who consider themselves superior — by race, color, creed or position on the Forbes annual list of billionaires — to the mass of men and women. Scientific advancements make us ever more aware that we are all the same and should enjoy the same basic rights to education, health care, civil liberties like voting, freedom of and freedom from religion, and the freedom to read or otherwise consume whatever opinions or cultural works we choose — the very things that the current occupant of the White House and his MAGA followers are working to take away from us. Beyond the historical friction between science and religious beliefs (for which earlier scientists could be imprisoned or burned at the stake), the main reason MAGA hates science is human-caused global climate change. Al Gore famously called global warming an 'inconvenient truth,' but Donald Trump persists in calling it 'a hoax,' while defunding climate research, green technology, NOAA and FEMA. The COVID pandemic gave MAGA followers many more incoherent reasons to distrust science, while watching 'their favorite president' politicize every aspect of the response. Apparently, millions would rather suffer mightily — or even die, as many willfully unvaccinated people did — than admit they were wrong. It's a sad aspect of human nature to feel we have such sunk costs in our often-wrongheaded opinions that we are willing to perish for them. I was a biology major in college for a few years, with vague plans of medical school, vaguely until I switched to journalism. I would not pretend to be a scientist based on that curtailed education, but I did spend 36 years in medical publishing. As a production editor and later as a submission systems manager, I came to understand the significant work of researchers and the selfless work of the many peer reviewers who help editors determine which studies merit publication. For many journals I worked with, the acceptance rates were astonishingly small. MAGA conspiracy heads might call that publication process elitist, and claim that people with worthwhile ideas are being kept out of the conversation. Most people in the sciences, however, understand the process as separating the wheat from the chaff by culling out the many papers that for one reason or another — perhaps poor design or insignificant findings — fail to advance scientific knowledge. But you don't need any understanding of science to understand that what Trump and his party of grifters and religious zealots are doing to universities by withholding research funding will be economically devastating to this country, slowing scientific progress and seriously disrupting the lives and careers of many researchers, technicians, lab assistants and students. The long-term negative effects of Trump's attack on science, which are also part of the full-spectrum MAGA assault on education and the nonpartisan civil service, will likely be even worse. Students will be increasingly reluctant to pursue careers in science. Only a months ago, STEM courses in high school and college were viewed as critical to the future of American ingenuity and enterprise, a big part of what actually made America great. It's impossible to gauge just how much damage will be done as we ban vaccines, deny climate science and make measles great again. Many MAGA supporters don't want to share 'their' America with brown people who may or may not be citizens; too many of them welcome the persecution and deportation of longtime U.S. residents who put in long hours at child care centers, hotels and restaurants, construction and landscaping companies, hospitals and nursing homes, and in agricultural fields, doing the thankless and often grueling work of picking and delivering the crops that feed the nation. Britain's decision to leave the European Union — one of the worst self-inflicted wounds of recent political history — has cost the U.K. an estimated 6% drop in GDP so far. The probable result of MAGA's lust to spend billions on hiring more masked, secret police-style ICE agents to deport hard-working, tax-paying immigrants, even if we look beyond the human suffering, will be a Brexit-level recession on steroids. Ultimately, what our felonious, ever-grifting president wants to do is to destroy all expertise in this country. That's what autocrats do. The manchild MAGA leader can't stand for any so-called experts to question him when he makes idiotic suggestions about public health proposes setting off nuclear bombs inside a hurricane or tries to change the longstanding name of a geographical feature to gratify his fragile ego. He wants to claim that his supposedly big and beautiful bill is the most popular legislation in history and that he's the greatest president ever, and doesn't want to hear egghead historians tell him otherwise. Trump hates to be questioned — so he hates journalists, scientists and anyone else with the kind of education that encourages critical thinking. That's why he has surrounded himself with an entire Cabinet of white nationalist frat boys, shameless sycophants and fellow grifters — not to mention a supermajority of right-wing Supreme Court justices who appear ready to hand him absolute power. 'American Robin,' a poem by Barbara Crooker that was recently featured in George Bilgere's 'Poetry Town' newsletter, is about our inability to respond appropriately to the devastation of human-made climate change. But it applies equally well to all the anti-science, misogynist, racist, Dark Enlightenment nonsense coming from the right that seeks to rob you, your children and your grandchildren of a financially and environmentally secure future. It begins this way: Here's that bird again, launching from the rhododendron, banging his forehead on my living room window. Thump. Thump. Does he see his own reflection in the glass or does he see a rival, a threat to his nest? I hang a black raptor silhouette in the middle square, but that does not deter him. Knock yourself out, I keep thinking. Next, I try cardboard, then a sheet of newspaper smeared with its terrible news. He comes back. Do I admire him for his persistence or shrug at his stupidity? Thunk. Thunk. Read the whole poem; I'll wait. One could read Crooker's dismay at the American robin's thumps and thunks against her windowpane as a rhyme for the name of a certain infamous conman turned populist demagogue. But that is perhaps unfair — to the poet and the bird. This article previously appeared in slightly different form at Medium. Used by permission. The post Why MAGA hates science so much appeared first on Solve the daily Crossword
