Tag: Health

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Scientists map widening gap in longevity

Life expectancy map
This chart maps the lows and the highs in average life expectancy as of 2014. (Dwyer-Lindgren et al., UW / IHME via JAMA Internal Medicine)

A county-by-county survey of U.S. life expectancy reports a 20-year gap between the lows and the highs – a gap that correlates with socioeconomic factors, race and ethnicity, and the availability of health care as well as preventable risk factors such as obesity and smoking.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and published in JAMA Internal Medicine, suggests that the gap is widening.

“This is way worse than any of us had assumed,” UW professor Ali Mokdad, who leads U.S. county health research at the institute, told The Guardian.

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Naveen Jain’s Viome offers a gut check

Naveen Jain
Viome CEO Naveen Jain shows how a stool sample would be placed into a kit for an analysis of gut microbes. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

BELLEVUE, Wash. – Seattle-area entrepreneur Naveen Jain is ramping up Viome, a wellness monitoring service that’s the first venture brought to life by his BlueDot innovation factory.

Viome blends readings from your blood, urine, saliva and stool samples to develop a profile of your biochemistry, as well as the microbes in your digestive system, and then feeds that profile into a smartphone app that spits out personalized recommendations for diet and lifestyle.

That basic model is the foundation for a widening array of wellness ventures, including Seattle-based Arivale as well as Ubiome in San Francisco, DayTwo in Israel and at least half a dozen others. But Viome CEO Jain and his fellow executives are banking on a technology they’re licensing from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to analyze the human gut microbiome in unmatched detail.

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UW ‘genius’ gets health apps set for startup

Bangladesh app trial
Doctors at a clinic in Bangladesh observe the use of the SpiroSmart app to measure lung function. (UW Photo)

BOSTON – University of Washington computer scientist Shwetak Patel’s work with sensors and smart devices has already spawned a wide range of ventures, but his latest experiments hold the promise of revolutionizing health screening worldwide.

Patel and his colleagues are using smartphones, and even not-so-smartphones, as monitoring devices for health metrics ranging from pulmonary function to hemoglobin counts.

The phone apps – including SpiroSmart and SpiroCall, HemoApp and OsteoApp – are currently going through the Food and Drug Administration’s clearance process for clinical testing. But once they pass muster, they’re likely to become the focus for Senosis Health, a venture co-founded by Patel that’s currently in semi-stealth mode.

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How a robo-trap zeroes in on Zika mosquitoes

Mosquito trap
Microsoft researcher Ethan Jackson sets up a robotic mosquito trap in Grenada. (Microsoft Photo)

BOSTON – Microsoft’s robotic mosquito trap is so smart it can tell one insect species from another – and that’s good news for scientists fighting the Zika virus, dengue fever and other mosquito-borne maladies.

It can also tell if you’re buzzing an electric toothbrush in its vicinity.

The toothbrush was used to dramatic effect today by Ethan Jackson, a Microsoft researcher from Redmond, Wash.

Jackson heads up Project Premonition, a research effort aimed at giving epidemiologists smarter tools for tracking disease outbreaks. Today he showed how the high-tech trap works at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Boston.

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This laser scanner goes inside blood vessels

Endoscope views
Scanning fiber angioscopic images with red reflectance for structural images (left) and blue fluorescence for label-free biochemical contrast (right). The images reveal multiple atherosclerotic lesions with very low fluorescence in the blue spectrum in comparison to the surrounding healthy artery. (University of Michigan Medicine Photos)

Researchers have found a way to use a laser-scanning mini-camera to map the inner working of blood vessels and spot the early signs of stroke risk.

The proof-of-concept demonstrations, conducted using carotid arteries that were harvested during autopsies, are described today in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

The technique takes advantage of an instrument known as a scanning fiber endoscope, or SFE, which was invented by Eric Seibel, a mechanical engineering research professor at the University of Washington.

Seibel designed the endoscope to be used in early cancer detection, but medical researchers at the University of Michigan repurposed the device to look for signs of atherosclerosis inside the harvested arteries. The researchers also conducted experiments using live rabbits.

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Diarrhea linked to telomere troubles later in life

Image: Telomeres
Telomeres, highlighted in green, serve as protective DNA caps for the cell’s chromosomes. (Illustration courtesy of BioViva USA)

Frequent bouts of diarrhea can be bad news for babies, even decades later: A new study has found a correlation between childhood infections and significant shortening of telomeres, a phenomenon that’s linked to the cellular aging process.

The findings, published today in the American Journal of Human Biology, point to a potential linkage between the environmental and genetic factors that play a role in human health.

They also point to the importance of initiatives aimed at curbing infant diarrhea, such as those funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Scientists use bands and Bing for sleep study

Sleepy woman
A study based on data from 30,000 users of Microsoft Bands confirms that sleep deprivation leads to reduced cognitive performance, at least when using the Bing search engine. (Bigstock Photo)

It may not be surprising that lack of sleep leaves you less sharp, but researchers have now quantified the effect with a surprisingly large sample: More than 30,000 people who wear Microsoft’s fitness bands and use Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

The results of the study suggest that a couple of short nights can slow you down for days afterward.

“When you don’t sleep well, it affects your cognitive performance, which means your work performance and lots of other things,” lead study author Tim Althoff said in a report on the Microsoft Next blog.

Althoff, who’s working on his Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University, led the research team last summer during an internship at Microsoft’s research lab in Redmond, Wash. The resulting paper is to be presented in April at this year’s World Wide Web Conference in Perth, Australia.

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Big data helps scientists solve protein puzzles

Protein models
The molecular diagram at left is a representation of a protein molecule known as DMT superfamily transporter YddG, generated by Rosetta@Home software. The diagram at right is a representation of the molecule as determined by experiments. (Sergei Ovchinnikov et al. / UW via AAAS / Science)

Molecular biologists have enlisted cutting-edge trends in genomics and big data to get a grip on one of the grand challenges of biotech: figuring out how protein molecules fold.

But they couldn’t have done it without the help of tens of thousands of volunteers.

The fruits of all that crowdsourced computer labor went public today in the journal Science. Researchers from the University of Washington and other institutions say they’ve solved more than 600 protein-folding mysteries – which represents a fair proportion of the estimated 5,200 protein families whose molecular structure was unknown.

Still more solutions are in the works, and solving those puzzles could lead to new types of medicines and synthetic molecular machinery.

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How wearables told this scientist he was sick

Michael Snyder
Geneticist Michael Snyder was wearing seven biosensors collecting data about his health when he noticed changes in his heart rate and oxygen level during a flight. (Stanford Photo / Steve Fisch)

Stanford geneticist Michael Snyder’s research into wearable biosensors has turned into a case study demonstrating the promise of predictive medicine – with Snyder as the star subject.

Snyder had himself and 59 other people hooked up with an array of up to seven biosensors that are designed to monitor heart rate, skin temperature, oxygen uptake, body activity and other health metrics.

The continuous sensor readings were supplemented by periodic lab tests, focusing on factors ranging from blood chemistry to gene expression. It’s similar to the personalized approach to wellness that’s being pioneered by Seattle-based Arivale.

“We want to study people at an individual level,” Snyder explained in a report on the study from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The study, published today in PLOS Biology, shows that it’s possible to associate deviations from a health baseline with environmental conditions, illnesses or other factors that affect a person’s health. Once those deviations are distilled into algorithms, wearable sensors could provide an early warning about conditions ranging from common infections to the early signs of diabetes.

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Expert panel confirms pot’s medical benefits

Marijuana in pots
Marijuana plants grow in pots. (Photo via Flickr/Creative Commons/Brett Levin)

For years, drug experts have issued warnings about marijuana, but an authoritative report issued today acknowledges its potential benefits – and says one of the biggest risks is not knowing more about marijuana’s health effects.

The report, issued by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, says the scarcity of research is “a significant public health concern for vulnerable populations such as adolescents and pregnant women.”

Sixteen experts in public health and related fields spent months reviewing thousands of studies that have been done to date, and cited evidence that marijuana and its cannabinoid spin-offs can alleviate chronic pain in adults. Short-term use can help alleviate muscle spasms related to multiple sclerosis, or the nausea and vomiting related to chemotherapy.

On the flip side, the report confirms that driving and marijuana don’t mix, and that unintentional ingestion of the drug leads to overdoses in children.

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