The study found that patients with at least five CTCs detected straight after surgery have a four-fold increase in the risk of recurrence and a three-fold increase in risk of death.

German researchers from nine university hospitals conducted the study which confirmed that CTCs carry important information about survival rates. Additionally, the researchers have postulated that the CTCs could be a target for treatment, with new technology opening up the possibility of more in depth studies in this area.

Identifying the number of CTCs was previously very difficult, with most experiments lacking the technological resources to carry out such an experiment. But recent advances mean that it is possible to find them using a semi-automated detection device, which eradicates the reliance on bone marrow samples.

Dr Bernadette Jäger, a scientist on the study said: “Looking for CTCs in blood samples is much less invasive than taking bone marrow.

“Although there is no direct advantage to the patient knowing her CTC status, this is already a step forward, and in the future we believe that the presence of CTCs could be used as a marker for monitoring the efficacy of treatment.”

By combining the method with routine blood collection, it also means that the condition can be monitored throughout the disease. The researchers have already started to follow up on their results by  evaluating CTC counts of patients straight after chemotherapy and at two and five year intervals.

As well as tracking the CTC counts they will also be looking into adding a secondary drug called lapatinib to standard treatment in patients with HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer and HER2-positive CTCs.

Dr Jäger added: “HER2 status can change as the disease advances.

“If there is no relapsed tumour in the primary cancer site it is difficult to perform a new histopathological examination. Being able to detect this change in CTCs would be much less invasive than having to take a biopsy of a metastasis which is often anatomically inaccessible.”

Researchers at A*STAR’s Institute of Medical Biology (IMB), in collaboration with doctors and scientists in Jordan, Turkey, Switzerland and USA, identified the genetic cause of the birth defect, which is a rare genetic disorder known for causing abnormal facial features and defects in the heart, bone, blood and reproductive cells.

Until now, the exact cause of the disease was unknown, but the collaborative research effort was able to uncover that the genetic mistake is a mutation in a single gene called IRX5. This is the first time such a mutation has ever been discovered in man, which makes the findings quite groundbreaking in the field.

IRX5 is a gene that is present not only in humans but also in mice, fish, frogs, flies and even worms. Carine Bonnard, a final-year PhD student at IMB and the first author of the paper, said: “Because Hamamy syndrome causes a wide range of symptoms, not just in newborn babies but also in the adult, this implies that IRX5 is critical for development in the womb as well as for the function of many organs in our adult body.”

She continued to explain that finding a causative gene for people with this condition will be a catalyst for research efforts in the future, with other conditions attached to the Irx gene family also open for exploration, such as bone homeostasis, or gamete formation for instance.

Dr Bruno Reversade, senior principal investigator at IMB said: “We believe that this discovery could open up new therapeutic solutions to common diseases like osteoporosis, heart disease, anaemia which affect millions of people worldwide.

“The findings also provide a framework for understanding fascinating evolutionary questions, such as why humans of different ethnicities have distinct facial features and how these are embedded in our genome.”

Henry Ford Hospital researchers made the discovery by taking data from 328 sepsis patients with no previous history of protein in the urine. They found the urine dipstick test predicted the presence of renal failure in 55 per cent of these patients, which is the first time the method has been used to test for renal failure in sepsis patients.

Results of the study were presented  at the National Kidney Foundation’s annual meeting in Washington, US, and Javier Neyra, M.D., a third-year resident at Henry Ford and the study’s lead author said that the main benefits of the test are that it is widely available and inexpensive.

He added: “The dipstick test excess protein, or proteinria, resulted in fewer false positives and a greater threshold for detecting more severe renal failure compared to other biomarkers. Ultimately, he says, the test may provide timely and early diagnosis of renal failure before substantial damage has already been done.”

Dangerous strains of E. coli bacteria sicken millions of people each year and kill untold numbers of children. New research could lead to preventative methods being created or treatments being found.

Researchers in the US have uncovered that the bacteria that usually live in our digestive tracts compete against invading bacteria such as E. coli to help our bodies fend them off. They have also found that the invasive bacteria depends on certain genes to gain a temporary upper-hand in this battle, which they keep just long enough to reproduce and cause the symptoms that expel their offspring from the body so they can find a new host.

The new findings have been published in journal Science, and point to new ways to treat infections by enterohemorrhagic or enteropathogenic E. coli. These are the strands that lurk in undercooked food or untreated water and cause diarrhoea and other symptoms that sicken adults and can kill vulnerable children.

Gabriel Nunez, M.D., the U-M pathologist who led the research team, said: "More than 1,000 species of bacteria live in our guts, in a symbiotic population called the microbiota.

"These results show that these bacteria, also called commensals, compete with pathogens (disease-causing bacteria) in a previously unappreciated way — and that the pathogens use a specific set of genes to temporarily outcompete commensals before leaving the body. Understanding this gives us potential targets for prevention and treatment."

One such treatment could be selectively removing some nutrients and boosting others. This could help because harmful bacteria compete with commensal bacteria for certain nutrients that they need to survive, and therefore targeting the use of antibiotics when treating patients could lead to greater success.

This highlights the role that inanimate objects can play in spreading the norovirus infection.

The research, which has been published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, confirmed the great potential for contamination of surfaces in norovirus outbreaks in group settings. Noroviruses are a primary cause of gastroenteritis around the world, and are highly contagious. It spreads efficiently from faeces and vomit by direct contact or by indirect transmission from viral contamination of surfaces.

In this case, the group that came down with gastroenteritis appeared to have no apparent direct physical contact with a pathogen, which prompted investigators to explore how the illness had managed to spread.

They found that a reusable grocery bag had been unfortunately stored in the bathroom of a girl that had contracted gastroenteritis, and the virus had aerosolized within the bathroom and settled onto the bag and its contents. This was confirmed when matching viruses were found on the reusable shopping bag two weeks later.

This confirmed the great potential for contamination of surfaces in group settings, and also "provides a fascinating example of how a unique exposure and transmission scenario can result in a norovirus outbreak," study authors from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention explain.

A UK biotech company have found that having a test which checks if an embryo contains the right amount of genetic information could dramatically improve the effectiveness of IVF, with figures revealing that this could increase pregnancy rates by 65 per cent.

IVF is notoriously varied in terms of success rate, with only around a third of women under 35 becoming pregnant from an IVF cycle. That figure drops to one in five by a woman's late 30s and about one in 20 by her mid-40s.

The treatment only works if there are a balanced number of chromosomes from both the mother and the father. If mistakes are made and the embryo is imbalanced, then it means that in most cases it won’t develop.

This is what the new treatment is looking to mend. The screening method developed by Blue Gnome takes a few cells from the embryo when it is five days old. These are analysed to count the chromosomes, with only those with the correct number being implanted.

The researchers tested the effectiveness of current screening methods with using chromosome counting alongside standard tests, finding that 20 weeks after the embryo was implanted, 69 per cent of women who had additional screening were pregnant. This compared to only 42 per cent of the control group where the procedure was not used.
Blue Gnome chief executive Nick Haan said the test "can offer a dramatic benefit" to IVF success rates.

"While further studies are still needed, this result is incredibly exciting because it indicates for the first time that 24-chromosome screening and single-embryo transfer has the potential to become the default standard of care for all IVF cycles worldwide."

The study has been published in PLoS ONE, and could lead to more efficient cures for those suffering from heart disease, which is a leading cause of death in many advanced nations. At present, the treatment of the illness is seen to be inefficient and a drain on hospital funds, but the new discoveries could lead to more calculated and cost-efficient methods being established.

Study author John Dawson, a molecular and cellular biology professor, said: "In order to cure heart disease, you have to understand its fundamental properties.

"So we looked at variants of naturally occurring proteins that are found in people with heart disease."

This primarily focussed on the actin protein, which is the most abundant protein in the body and helps in vital processing such as muscle movement. They examined gene abnormalities in this protein as well as its role in heart failure in order to pinpoint where things are going wrong.

Scientists have already linked HCM and DCM to 14 actin gene abnormalities. "But this is the first time that many of these variants have been studied at the molecular level," Dawson said.

It is hoped that this work will help to advanced targeted treatments of heart disease. Much like cancer, there are various different forms and variants which could be used to treat the root cause rather than the system as a whole. This could also improve the quality of life for patients who are successfully treated.

The University of Guelph researchers will now look further into developing these treatments, which is a growing field of interest for scientists around the world studying cardiovascular disease.

The math problem dates back to Sanskrit scrolls, but has only just been exposed by nanotechnology researchers. According to the ancient text we have been missing a version of the famous "packing problem," and its new guise could have big implications on the medical industry as well as computer science and construction industries.

The mathematical equation is called the ‘filing problem’, and it seeks out the best way of filling an object with a particular shape. Contrary to the traditional ‘packing problem’, the discs can overlap. It also differs from the ‘covering problem’, in that the disks can't extend beyond the triangle's boundaries.

Sharon Glotzer, U-M professor of chemical engineering said: "Besides introducing the problem, we also provided a solution in two dimensions.” This is what makes it applicable to treating tumours using fewer shots with radiation beams or speeding up the manufacturing of silicon chips for microprocessors.

Carolyn Phillips explains that the key to finding a solution in any dimension is to find the shape’s skeleton. Ms Phillips is a postdoctoral fellow at Argonne National Laboratory, and said:"Every shape you want to fill has a backbone that goes through the centre of the shape, like a spine.”

The researchers have had their paper published in Physical Review Letters, where they report the rules for how to find the ideal size and spacing of the discs that fill a shape.  They hope that this research will help them create an algorithm that can take the desired shape and the number of discs, or the shape and percentage of the area to be filled, and spit out the best pattern to fill it.

The algorithm is likely to be most suited to nanotechnology, but in biology and medicine, researchers often need models for complex shapes, such as those of proteins.

Miss Phillips said:"You don't want to model every single one of the thousands of atoms that make up this protein.
“You want a minimal model that gives the shape, allowing the proteins to interact in a lock-and-key way, as they do in nature."

The study was conducted by doctors at San Antonio intensive care unit, US, who reviewed 30 years of life-threatening asthma cases in the hospital. They found that admissions had dropped by 74 per cent in this time, primarily because patients had been seen to take greater control over their own medications. Physicians also found that intubation in the emergency department to help patients breathe did not result in longer hospital stays.

UT Medicine is the clinical practice of the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, US. Researchers at the faculty studied inpatient care of status asthmaticus, which is a condition where  respiratory failure occurs because their asthma is not responding to standard therapies.

Lead author Jay I. Peters, M.D., professor and chief of pulmonary diseases in the School of Medicine said: "The main reason for the decline in cases is that more of our patients are taking their controller medications such as inhaled corticosteroids, which reduce the amount of inflammation in the airways.”

Sandy Mattei models the bodysuit. Credit: Mark Vorreuter

A scientist from Cornell University and an African designer teamed up on the project which is hoped to ward off mosquitoes infected with malaria.

The duo has attempted to make insecticide-treated nets into everyday wear, allowing those in malaria areas to be protected both in the day and at night.

They used metal organic framework molecules to bind the repellent and fabric at the nanolevel, resulting in a mesh fabric which can be filled with up to three times more insecticide than normal fibrous nets, which usually wear off after about six months.

Frederick Ochanda, postdoctoral associate in Cornell's Department of Fiber Science & Apparel Design and a native of Kenya, said: "The bond on our fabric is very difficult to break.

"The nets in use now are dipped in a solution and not bonded in this way, so their effectiveness doesn't last very long."

Not only is the garment safer for those wearing it, but it is also a very fashionable piece to wear. Matilda Ceesay, a Cornell apparel design undergraduate from Gambia, said that the colourful garment consists of an underlying one-piece body suit, hand-dyed in vibrant hues of purple, gold and blue, and a mesh hood and cape containing the repellent.

Both Mr Ochanda and Ms Ceesay have had family members who have suffered with malaria, and even though they are from the opposite sides of the world, this is what brought them together with an ambition to increase protection in malaria areas.

Mr Ochanda said: "Seeing malaria's effect on people in Kenya, it's very important for me to apply fibre science to help this problem.

"A long-term goal of science is to be able to come up with solutions to help protect human health and life, so this project is very fulfilling for me."