Blood Test for Pain

According to Science Daily, an article called "Breakthrough toward developing blood test for pain" introduces a test which can measure pain biomarkers in blood. This study was influenced by the opioid crisis in Indiana. This blood test, would allow more accuracy for doctors to treat the patient in pain. Since pain is only sensed by the patient, it is hard for physicians to measure the level of pain the patient has, they can only go by what the patient says.

Opioid epidemics occur because addictive medications were overprescribed due to the fact that there was no objective measure whether someone was in pain or how severe the pain was. The biomarkers are like fingerprints, the doctors will match it against a database and see which compound would normalize the signature.

This blood test will allow the patient to be matched to the right drug, without overprescribing medication. Doctors and researchers believe that this will end the opioid epidemic and will allow future monitoring of the patients health. Doctor and researcher Niculescu of this blood test is hoping to raise some money in order to further this study and allow it to be put into action.

I think that this is a good invention, a lot of doctors would much rather prescribe medication to treat pain, not fully knowing the severity of pain and if there are signs of pain. I actually had a personal experience where I had horrible knee pain and in order to rid of the pain, a doctor prescribed opioids. I was later diagnosed by another doctor with a torn meniscus. I, personally, never took the opioids and stuck to over-the-counter medication for pain. But it is the idea that, I never asked for opioids, nor did I wish to take them, however the doctor thought it was best for pain.  Hence why the opioid epidemic is a serious issue, not only in United States but all over the world.

A New Approach to Detecting Cancer Earlier From Blood Tests

        Dr. Daniel De Carvalho an immunologist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre located in Toronto, Ontario, has had scientists working hard to use "liquid biopsy's", such as blood tests, for epigenetic alterations to detect cancer in its earliest stages, enabling early treatment.  Dr. Carvalho describes that they are able to detect cancer at its earliest stages allowing patients easier treatment and no suffering.  This is done by profiling epigenetic alterations instead of its mutations.  This allowed the scientists to discover thousands of modifications specific to each type of cancer there is.  The scientists then used machine learning to be able to identify DNA present in cancer.  It is then able to use the blood sample to determine what cancer type is prevalent.  

          

  

            The scientists used 300 patients tumor samples and tracked the origin of their cancers and compared them to "samples from healthy donors with the analysis of cel-free DNA circulating in the blood plasma.  In every sample, the "floating" plasma DNA matched the tumor DNA.  The team has since expanded the research and has now profiled and successfully matched more than 700 tour and blood samples from more cancer types."  (University Health Network)  Some cancer types include lung, pancreatic, colorectal, breast, leukemia, bladder, and kidney cancer.  

             To further the study and expand their horizons they want to use a large populations blood samples that have been collected for months before they could detect it with cancer.  This will advance their abilities in cancer screening.  The biggest issue has been finding a way to detect cancer early enough, so that it can be treated quickly without further symptoms occurring, and hopefully this is the answer to all of our problems.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181114132000.htm

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cancer/in-depth/cancer-diagnosis/art-20046459