A blood test for colon cancer performed well in a study published Wednesday, offering a new kind of screening for a leading cause of cancer deaths.

The test looks for DNA fragments shed by tumor cells and precancerous growths. It’s already for sale in the U.S. for $895, but has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and most insurers do not cover it. The maker of the test, Guardant Health, anticipates an FDA decision this year.

In the study, the test caught 83% of the cancers but very few of the precancerous growths found by colonoscopy, the gold standard for colon cancer screening. Besides spotting tumors, colonoscopies can prevent the disease by removing precancerous growths called polyps.

With coral reefs under attack from ongoing climate change effects, what steps can be taken to reverse the damage? This is what a recent study published in iScience hopes to address as a team of international researchers investigated how to monitor coral reef health that is impacted through climate change, specifically with altering biomineralization, which is the driving force behind coral reef formation. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand how climate change impacts coral reef health and potential steps to improve conservation of corals throughout the world.

“The whole ecosystem is dying. You can listen to the death all you want, but what are you going to do to fix it?” said Dr. Mark Martindale, who is the director of the University of Florida’s Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience and a co-author on the study. “In order to do that, you need to understand what the problems are. And you need an experimental system to do that. Now we have that system.”

Is there a connection between vaping cigarettes or cannabis, irregular mealtimes, and frequent headaches in individuals under 18 years of age? This is what a recent study published in the journal Neurology hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Calgary investigated how lifestyle choices combined with vaping could result in frequent headaches among youth. This study holds the potential to help researchers, medical professionals, and the public better understand the short-and long-term health risks associated with vaping cigarettes or cannabis.

For the study, the researchers enlisted 4,978,370 participants aged between 5 and 17 years for a health survey with the goal of ascertaining a connection between lifestyle choices—vaping, irregular mealtimes, and extended periods of screen time—and the frequency of headaches they reported as part of the survey. In the end, the researchers found that 6.1 percent of the participants experienced frequent headaches who also exhibited the aforementioned lifestyle choices, specifically including e-cigarettes and smoking in the house.

“These results are important because there is surprisingly little research looking at lifestyle and headaches in kids and teens,” said Dr. Serena Orr, MD, who is an assistant professor of pediatrics, community health sciences, and clinical neurosciences at the University of Calgary and a co-author on the study. “As a headache neurologist, I think that it’s critical to understand the role that lifestyle factors play, because prescribing medication alone is not the ideal way of treating headaches at any age.”

Combined, infection, autoimmunity and cancer account for 4 out of every 10 deaths worldwide, and represent major global health challenges. In a paper in the journal Cell Reports, Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) researchers highlight a novel discovery of how the human immune system works in common ways across diseases, and offer promising avenues for exploring multi-disease therapeutic strategies.

Many therapies, while effective for one class of disease, may aggravate others. Cancer treatments like immune checkpoint blockade, for example, can trigger autoimmunity. Similarly, drugs targeting autoimmune diseases may leave patients more susceptible to infections and cancer.

“Understanding shared human immune system characteristics across these disease contexts is crucial for identifying potential therapeutic strategies that could treat a patient’s primary ailment while not triggering secondary conditions,” said ISB President Dr. Jim Heath, corresponding author of the paper.

Cervical cancer, which develops in the lower portion of the uterus, known as the cervix, typically grows slowly. Cells in the cervix can change, a process known as dysplasia, and the resulting abnormal cells, if not removed, can develop into cervical cancer.

When cervical cancer occurs, treatment options vary based on many factors, including how far the disease has advanced and the overall health of the patient. Some cervical cancer patients may undergo a simple hysterectomy (also known as a complete or total hysterectomy). A simple hysterectomy removes the uterus and cervix.

The perimetrium, fat and connective tissue around the uterus, connects the uterus to the cervix and other tissues. Some patients with cervical cancer experience “parametrial invasion” (also referred to as parametrial infiltration), during which cervical cancer has spread into the parametrial tissue.