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Cancer diagnosis breakthrough, anxious picky eaters and the computer game to aid schizophrenia

Scientists are excited about a ‘breakthrough’ in pancreatic cancer diagnosis, the Telegraph reports.

Currently, just 3% of the 9,000 patients diagnosed annually in the UK survive the disease, but the findings of three indicator proteins in urine may help in achieving earlier diagnosis and therefore a better prognosis.

People who were picky eaters as children are more likely to develop depression and anxiety, researchers claim. They said this was the case whether the child was a severe fussy eater or only moderately so.

According to the Daily Mail’s report, reasons could range from these people having heightened senses to the impaired lives they suffered by limiting what they were willing to eat, including affecting the parent-child relationship.

Also on the Daily Mail, schizoprenic sufferers may be helped by a new ‘brain training’ app.

The game, developed by neuroscientists at the University of Cambridge, is designed to help in living a normal life by improving memory function.

Professor Barbara Sahakian, of the Department of Psychiatry, said: ‘We need a way of treating the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as problems with episodic memory, but slow progress is being made towards developing a drug treatment.

‘So this proof-of-concept study is important because it demonstrates that the memory game can help where drugs have so far failed.’


          

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