Tomorrow’s Health: Diagnosing asthma, using frozen sperm & detecting prostate cancer

(WWNY) - Around the world, more than 260 million people suffer from asthma, and their numbers keep growing.

Researchers in Australia have discovered a new way to diagnose the most serious and potentially deadly cases.

By analyzing urine samples, they identified biochemical changes that occur in the lungs.

They hope the finding will lead to new treatments for severe asthma, which can’t be controlled by existing medications.

Frozen sperm

Frozen sperm is as effective as fresh samples when used as a fertility treatment.

That’s the finding of a long-term study conducted at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital.

It found that freezing sperm had no impact on pregnancy rates, though it noted some women tended to get pregnant faster by using fresh samples.

Detecting prostate cancer

MRIs remain the gold standard for visualizing prostate cancer.

A study presented in Amsterdam said older MRI technology appears to be more accurate than the new prostate-specific PET/CT imaging systems.

In a test, both machines were used to screen patients for prostate abnormalities.

They were equally effective at detecting clinically significant cancers.

But biopsies showed the MRIs were better at detecting all other grades of the disease.

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