Can Analyzing Your Spit and Blood Make You a Better Athlete?

Critics, however, worry that businesses are getting ahead of scientific data. The tests still aren't cheap, either, running several hundred dollars depending on the number of biomarkers or genes tested. In the case of blood tests, which most companies suggest repeating several times a year, it's an ongoing investment, too.

 One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick

His smelling machine uses an array of sensors composed of gold nanoparticles or carbon nanotubes. They are coated with ligands, molecular receptors that have a high affinity for certain biomarkers of disease found in exhaled breath.

 The Ultimate Blood Test

The analysis focuses on blood biomarkers, which are chemicals whose presence or amount may indicate abnormal processes or reactions in the body. Among the most familiar are cardiovascular ones: high- and low-density lipoproteins (HDL and LDL, the good and bad cholesterols) and triglycerides.

Biomarker Studies Could Realize Goal of More Effective and Personalized Cancer Medicine

Finding individual differences in tumors is key to treating the right patient with the right medicine at the right time, researchers say.

Emerging Biomarkers: How Reliable Is The Evidence?

Novel biomarkers are the subject of intense controversy, with a bewildering variety of factions and perspectives seeking to elevate or dismiss any of a large number of proposed new measures. Now a new examination of the literature published online in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that the evidence base used to evaluate novel biomarkers may be seriously compromised by selective reporting bias.

Google's New Moonshot Project: the Human Body

Google Inc. has embarked on what may be its most ambitious and difficult science project ever: a quest inside the human body. Called Baseline Study, the project will collect anonymous genetic and molecular information from 175 people—and later thousands more—to create what the company hopes will be the fullest picture of what a healthy human being should be.

How Biomarkers May Unlock Medical Mysteries

To cut through some of the mystery of mental disorders, universities and medical-technology companies are seeking firmer biological clues that may be lurking in blood and saliva--so-called biomarkers.

How Well Are You Aging? This Blood Test May Tell You

Your age may really just be a number: How well you’re aging may be better revealed by a pattern of chemicals found in your blood than by that number. Indeed, a new study finds that certain “biomarker signatures” in the blood can signal people’s risk of later developing some age-related health conditions.

Simple Blood Tests for Rapid Concussion Diagnosis

Physicians need more than the question: “How many fingers am I holding up?”

The fertility testing racket just got debunked by science

Researchers found there’s little correlation between a woman’s “ovarian reserve” test and her chances of getting pregnant.

Two Recent Scientific Advances Underscore an Encouraging Future for Precision Medicine at FDA

Two recent FDA drug approvals point to an encouraging future for “precision medicine” — an approach for disease treatment that tailors medical therapies, including medications, to the needs of individual patients. These approvals involve diseases resulting from particular genetic characteristics identified by laboratory testing.

What Biomarkers Can Say About Health

According to Biophysical Corporation, the 250 biochemical markers measured by its assay provide information about a broad range of the body’s organic systems and their state of function. The biomarkers can be accordingly assigned to different categories; some fit into several groupings simultaneously because those molecules play multiple important roles in sickness and health.