Areeba Hussain, Author at Spark Health MD

A Novel Epigenetic Saliva Test for Diagnosing Autism Spectrum Disorder In Children

Quadrant Biosciences Inc has released a novel epigenetic saliva test for diagnosing autism in children. Being the developer of modern diagnostic solutions, Quadrant Biosciences has named this new test as “Clarifi ASD™“. This test is specifically designed to help with diagnosing autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in younger patients i.e. 18 months to six years of age.

Quadrant Biosciences in collaboration with SUNY Upstate Medical University research team and Penn State College of Medicine research team to work on Clarifi ASD ™. This groundbreaking invention uses regulatory RNAs and microbes found in human saliva. To date, Clarifi ASD is the first-ever product that is launched by the Epigenetic Diagnostic Platform of this company.

It took more than seven years of extensive research to create Clarifi ASD. The research teams from the collaborative institutes i.e. SUNY Upstate Medical University and Penn State College of Medicine worked together to make it happen.

Dr. Steve Hicks, a researcher for this diagnostic test from Penn State Hershey Medical Center shares that current research explains a link between autism genes and the environment at an epigenetic level. He further added that his team has used a ‘poly-omic’ RNA-based method that mixes into metagenomic methods to differentiate children with autism. This diagnosis is so accurate that it is able to distinguish autism from other developmental delays in children and hence gives a correct diagnosis.

In the USA alone,1 in 59 children is diagnosed with autism every year. This figure shows a 10 times increase in autism prevalence in the last 40 years and probably, right now, this is the highest incidence rate ever. One of the biggest reasons for this high rate of autism is that specialists are less in number.

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While diagnosing autism in all suspects, it takes a long waiting time for the affected children to receive an autism evaluation. Surprisingly, autism can be diagnosed in 18 months old infants but still, the average age of autism diagnosis in the USA is 4 years. Early diagnosis is rarely made, however, an early diagnoses increase the chances of getting intensive behavioral therapy as soon as possible and improve autism in young kids.

Richard Uhlig, the founder, and CEO of Quadrant Biosciences shares that his company is on a mission to improve autism diagnosis and reduce the average age of this diagnosis from four years old to the second year of age. This new test would be used in addition to the standard procedures to diagnose autism who show signs of autism. It is possible to determine the symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children within a few weeks, using this test.

He further adds that the research leading to this innovation is mainly funded by the “National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)” and the “American Academy of Pediatrics”. Quadrant Biosciences is a famous name in epigenetic diagnostic testing. Through its extensive research solutions, it is able to introduce new diagnostic tests for autism, concussion injuries, and Parkinson’s disease.

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Healthcare providers can start using “Clarifi ASD™” to make early diagnosis possible and facilitate young patients with behavioral therapy. Hence, this test is able to identify children screen positive for autism would increase the chances of their complete recovery along with the right treatment plans.

The Global Teeth Whitening Market to Rise At Compound Annual Growth Rate Of 4% Till 2025

The awareness of oral hygiene has to lead to the global teeth whitening market to grow drastically. This rise is mainly due to efforts by manufacturers and physicians by introducing advanced oral care techniques and dental procedures. The global teeth whitening market is now estimated to rise at a 4% compound annual growth rate from the period 2019-2025.

These teeth whitening procedures are high in demand because the customers are now in need of these. There are multiple products available i.e. teeth bleaching products and this demand for teeth whitening aesthetic procedures is not stopping. The dental aesthetics industry is probably at the highest peak nowadays and the most popular treatments that it is offering are lightening, strain removing from inside and the outer surface of the teeth. The new technological tools, advanced scanners, improved 3d imaging tools, and software and innovative CAD/CAM are expanding the dental procedures.

The new study accounts for the current teeth whitening trends and estimates its dynamics for the 2019-2025 period. It further relates these trends with the supply and demand in dental care along with leading companies in manufacturing and services. This study is conducted by Reportlinker, which is a leading market research solution provider. It organizes the huge industrial data to analyze the market with ease.

Click here to read the complete report.
This report highlights the following perceptions in this rising global teeth whitening industry for the period 2019 to 2025.

It offers different growth projections for the teeth whitening market for the next 5 years.
It discusses market trends, forecasts, factors, and drivers to cause this increase.
It analyses different factors, challenges, and opportunities for new investments in the dental care sector.
It provides a complete regional overview of the rising market trends.
It includes a comprehensive summary of vendors, competitive evaluation and different marketing strategies to get huge market gains.

Teeth whitening procedures are high in demand, not in clinics but also in house applications. The use of these tools is convenient and some of them require no expert skills. On the other side, media activities and promotional campaigns are increasing the demand and also improving the efficiency of these products. Moreover, the increasing oral hygiene trends in people are adding up to all this and the introduction of modern teeth whitening and bleaching products has made it easier to follow in-home procedures.

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The retail business of teeth bleaching products involves manufacturing companies, wholesale distributors, local vendors and retailers, and lastly the consumers. The companies and local retailers rely mainly on sales agents, outlets and online services to sell their products. So to get a net gain in teeth whitening market, it’s not just the manufacturer but also the practices and selling strategies that are changing.

Mostly, discoloration of teeth is due to overconsuming certain type of food and drinks which leave stains on teeth. Also, the use of fluorinated water leaves a dental stain. The highest demand for teeth whiteners is in the North American market, followed by the US, Canada, China, Australia, Japan, Europe, Germany, UK, and others.

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This drastically changing technology is affecting vendors and consumers. In this case, any up-gradation should add manufacturers to identify new investment opportunities by introducing more teeth bleaching products. They should also leave no chance to improve the efficiency of the currently used products so that they never go down in sales, the report suggests.

Gastric Cancer Foundation Collects $250,000 Funds For Gastric Cancer Research And Programs

The Gastric Cancer Foundation (GCF) makes 10 years working for gastric cancer awareness, research, and programs. The fundraising event took place on November 16, this year at the Peninsula Golf and Country Club, San Mateo, California. More than 200 supporters attended this event and collected $250,000 funds to support patient programs and gastric cancer research. The event’s chair, Jeff Netzer honored the champions of this noble cause and appreciated the work for patient support.

Paul Gottsegen and Alice Leung together gave the inaugural award called “Champion of Hope” to Ron and Diane Weintraub, Hans Rueffert and Mohamad El-Zaatari. These awards are an acknowledgment for the deserving individuals who have helped in this important cause by all means.

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The co-chair, Alice Leung shares how these efforts extraordinarily improve the life of people who deserve it. It is a proud moment for the Gastric Cancer Foundation (GCF) to continue the support of people for such a long time. Throughout this time, the foundation made sure that it is providing hope and better treatment facilities for gastric cancer patients.

The anniversary event was sponsored by the following.

“Gold Sponsors Capital Group”
“Merck”
“Playstudios”
“The Netzer Family Foundation”
“Susanna Nichols”
“Sara and Jeff Schottenstein Family Charitable Fund”
“Silver Sponsor Five Prime”
“Pearl Sponsors First Republic Wealth Management and Parametric Portfolio”

Collectively, Gastric Cancer Foundation has arranged more than $2.3 million in funds for research in gastric cancer. This increased amount of funding is a relieving sign because gastric cancer only receives .04% of total federal funding for cancer research otherwise.

The foundation has opened the first-ever HIPAA-compliant Gastric Cancer Registry and also decided to give a perpetual Research Scholar Award to a young scientist who is pursuing research on gastric cancer. Otherwise, gastric cancer is often neglected even in research.

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Gastric Cancer Foundation launched its first Gastric Cancer Registry program in 2011. It is a secure HIPAA-compliant real-time database by Stanford University. All the researchers collect detailed data about gastric cancer patients and it includes the physical samples of the tumors as well. This information and sample are helpful for the researchers to make a plausible genomic analysis.

The Gastric Cancer Registry is an informative and developmental addition to prevent and treat gastric tumors in patients. This Registry was initially created with funding from Diane and Ronald Weintraub who donated the money in memory of their beloved daughter Beth Weintraub Schoenfeld.

Here is a link to enroll at Gastric Cancer Registry.

Since 2009, the Gastric Cancer Foundation (GCF) is working to maintain a record of all its strategic investments incorporated into early-stage research in gastric cancer. These funds lead to ground-breaking discoveries which were not possible without financial support. Overall, the Gastric Cancer Foundation works without profits and it is working to improve the life of gastric cancer patients for years.

Any supportive research in gastric cancer may help patients to improve their quality of life. All this started by JP Gallagher who was a marketing executive at Silicon Valley. At the age of 37, he was diagnosed with gastric cancer and he didn’t find any reliable information or treatment options regarding it. For six years he struggled with gastric cancer and passed away in 2013. The foundation was formed by Gallagher’s family and other people who were affected by this same disease.

ScriptSender Connects With EvoHealth To Strengthen Physicians Communications

ScriptSender, a fast track communication provider has announced a new partnership with EvoHealth, a company designing technological solutions in radiology. ScriptSender provides instant communication of a document from any medical group to the respective physician within seconds. This is particularly helpful for the imaging centers that can send their patient reports directly to the physician’s system in a few clicks only. This type of communication practices would bypass the difficulties and expenses of inefficient and delayed communication made through conventional sources.

EvoHealth is a tech company in healthcare sector that provides easy solutions for VNA, Mammo, Cardio, HER, RIS, Ortho, Billing, etc. It operates the whole workflow through a cloud platform and also involves in different marketing campaigns to make healthcare facilities better. Some of the examples include patient reminders for appointments, custom brand portals, and others.

The new partnership between EvoHealth and ScriptSender would be a value-added deal for all existing and new customers at EvoHealth. They would be able to access automated orders, clinical reports, and medical decision support systems. With all these new facilities, the problems of doing it all manual would be “thing of past”.

Katie Eckhardt, MD at EvoHealth shares that people are used to finding these medical inefficiencies are normal. Whether it is lost documents, unreadable faxes or mismanaged data, these things frequently happen at healthcare systems and people are fine with it. The real surprise would be when these things would not be able to hit anyone ever again.
The collaboration of ScriptSender and EvoHealth is making it possible for radiology physicians as well as patients to experience accurate and timely diagnostic results.

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ScriptSender provides completely secure, one-click communications between parties that are mostly healthcare systems. Thus it reduces the cost and difficulties related to new interfaces, day to day VPN issues, and missing faxes. Together EvoHealth and ScriptSender would work to provide true interoperability for radiology patients and their physicians.

The official website of ScriptSender ensures integration of any document relevant to healthcare, any form, application from a medical group to be sent directly to physicians by only one click. It involves now downloads, no installation, no complex interfaces to go through, all it requires is a single click to make it happen.

Jim Burchfield, Senior VP (Sales and Business Development) at ScriptSender shares that

“The automating the traditional and very manual administrative workflows of radiology, the EvoHealth and ScriptSender technologies overcome the boundaries that exist today in expensive HL7 integration costs and inefficient faxing. Leveraging technology in this manner reduces cost, increases efficiency, and improves patient care.”

Clients at EvoHealth’s RIS solution would be now able to add ScriptSender’s one-click integration technology in their plan to improve communication with physicians.

FDA Approved TULA System To Treat Ear Infections

For delivering tympanostomy tubes a new system called “The Tube Under Local Anesthesia System (TULA)” has been recently approved by the FDA. This system is used to treat recurrent ear infections called “otitis media” by directly inserted into the eardrum. In the physician clinical setting, this is the first ear tube delivery system that is applied to the young children by using the local anesthesia. TULA system comprises of Tusker Medical tympanostomy tubes, anesthetic into the eardrum, anesthetic Tymbion and the devices essential for ear tubes delivery.

Click here to read the press release by FDA.

Children are highly prone to get an ear infection, probably more than the adult population. It is the estimation of the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) that before the age of three years 5 out of 6 children will have any type of ear infection.

At the beginning of infection, it is recommended by health care professionals to treat infections by using antibiotics. And if the infection is not treated with antibiotics and it proliferates then they suggest the surgical procedure that requires a small tube to penetrate the eardrum. The delivery system in the young children may perform in the hospital and surgery center that require general anesthesia

According to Jeff Shuren, (director) FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health that every year millions of children suffering from ear infections i.e. otitis media, to save this great number of the population we must go for the effective treatment. The TULA approval gives an option to the patients to treat recurrent ear infections. With this approval, patients can access this treatment system in the local physician setting with great comfort.

By using the TULA system in the ear tube infections, we use the local anesthesia instead of general anesthesia in the clinical setting. For delivering the local anesthesia it uses a small electrical current into the eardrum. The system can be used in both adults and children younger than 6 months.

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The effectiveness of the Tula system was observed by administrating the drug in 222 pediatric patients to treat ear infections. The rate of success was 86% in the children aged younger than 5 and 89% in patients aged from 5-12 years old. Inadequate anesthesia is the common adverse effect seen during the delivery system. It is prohibited to use the system for those who already have some issues with their eardrum as the perforated eardrum.

The breakthrough Device designation was granted to the TULA system by the FDA. To develop an efficient device or product FDA provided the guidelines and interaction. A device must be capable to treat or diagnose the severe infections in disease or any condition to qualify the designation. It must meet the criteria such as no cleared and approved alternatives, devices represent a breakthrough technology or device availability must be patient’s interest.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a federal agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It works on protecting health of all citizens by making available safer, effective and secure medicines, vaccines and other health-related products and medical devices.

The U.S. FDA is also responsible for supplying food, supplements, cosmetics and other products that do not cause any health hazards and are free from harmful constituents. It also regulates controversial and questionable health supplies i.e. tobacco, cannabis, etc.