This review of salivary biomarkers for diagnosing periodontal disease only identified 4 studies at high risk of bias but suggests a small number of potential biomarkers. However the findings should be interpreted with caution.
[read the full story...]
Samei Huda presents the findings of a new meta-analysis, which explores the prognostic significance of competing ways of defining and measuring brief psychotic episodes.
[read the full story...]
Murtada Alsaif considers the challenges facing psychiatrists in diagnosing bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder. He reports on a recent qualitative study that explores the practical experience of psychiatrists and nurses and concludes that clinical diagnostic practice cannot reliably distinguish the two conditions.
[read the full story...]
Can blood-based diagnostic panels help us reduce the misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment often experienced by people with bipolar disorder? Murtada Alsaif reviews a recent retrospective study that has some encouraging findings for biologically identifying the disease.
[read the full story...]
Rosalyn Nelson reports on a recent systematic review about population screening for dementia, which highlights the negative attitudes of patients, carers and health care professionals towards screening. She asks: what are the risks of ignoring diagnosis?
[read the full story...]
This review included 102 studies the majority (77%) being laboratory-based findings that visual inspection had good caries detection accuracy in primary and permanent teeth, with a trend for higher specificity than sensitivity.
[read the full story...]
This Cochrane review of adjunctive diagnostic tests for oral cancer included 41 studies assessing vital staining, cytology, and light-based tests. The available studies were of poor quality detection with none of the tests being considered as a replacement for the currently used standard of a scalpel biopsy and histological assessment.
[read the full story...]
Clarissa Giebel summarises a systematic review, which concludes that the Rowland Universal Dementia Assessment Scale (RUDAS) has good sensitivity (77.2%) and specificity (85.9%) for diagnosing dementia in multicultural populations.
[read the full story...]
Andrew Shepherd summarises a recent series of papers in The Lancet which look at the latest research on personality disorders. This includes evidence on classification, prevalence, diagnosis, treatment and the experience of personality disorder across the life course.
[read the full story...]
Clarissa Giebel highlights 5 new Cochrane reviews on dementia diagnosis, focusing on the Mini-Cog, IQCODE and MMSE diagnostic tests.
[read the full story...]
