US-based cancer detection startup Navaux on Thursday announced receiving fresh funding, which it said, will play a "pivotal role" in entering the Indian market.

The life science company secured an undisclosed investment from angel investor Karna D. Shinde.

This comes as India is rapidly emerging as a hub for health-tech innovations, a trend highlighted by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's recent announcement in the Union Budget 2024-25, which offers relief to cancer patients by exempting three crucial cancer treatment medicines from customs duty.

"This investment will play a pivotal role in helping Navaux, a company specialising in early cancer detection technology, establish connections within the Indian healthcare industry as they prepare to introduce their cutting-edge solutions to the Indian market," the company said in a statement.

The shape of a person's kneecap may indicate their risk of developing osteoarthritis - a common and debilitating joint disease, suggested a study.

Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) in Australia focussed on potential differences in kneecap shape between men and women, given that women with knee osteoarthritis often experience more severe symptoms.

The team made use of CT scans to analyse the kneecaps of healthy individuals and patients awaiting knee replacement surgery.

They employed advanced image analysis techniques to create 3D models of the kneecaps and measured the surfaces’ shapes.

Young boys are more at risk of developing Type 1 diabetes (T1D) than girls, finds a study.

It showed that the risk decreases markedly in girls after age 10 years, while the risk in boys stays the same.

Furthermore, the risk of T1D is significantly higher for boys with a single autoantibody -- proteins produced by the body’s immune system that attack other proteins.

This suggests that the male gender could be linked with autoantibody development, indicating the importance of incorporating sex in the assessment of risk, said the team from the University of Exeter in the UK.

People can reduce their risk of age-related dementia by exercising their brains through simple daily habits instead of just relying on smartphones and Googling, according to a report on Monday.

Professor Mohamed I. Elmasry, a professor at the University of Waterloo, in his new book titled iMind: Artificial and Real Intelligence, emphasises nurturing real intelligence over artificial intelligence (AI), saying that the focus has shifted from the former to the latter and it can have far-reaching, debilitating consequences.

He says in iMind that “none comes close to duplicating the capacity, storage, longevity, energy efficiency, or self-healing capabilities of the original human brain-mind. The useful life expectancy for current smartphones is around 10 years, while a healthy brain-mind inside a healthy human body can live for 100 years or longer".

A healthy lifestyle, with proper diet and exercise along with increased awareness, is crucial to tackle the rising cases of brain strokes and other related diseases in the country, said experts on World Brain Day on Monday.

World Brain Day is observed every year on July 22 to amplify awareness and shed light on crucial aspects of brain health. The theme this year is ‘Brain Health and Prevention’.

Neurological disorders include stroke, headache disorders, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, Alzheimer’s disease, and other dementias, brain and central nervous system cancer, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, motor neuron diseases, and other neurological disorders.

High stress among women in pregnancy may get passed on to the foetus and raise the risk of depression and obesity among children later, finds a study.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Dartmouth College conducted a small study of 46 mothers and 40 toddlers and discovered a link between toddler hair cortisol levels -- a long-term stress biomarker -- and maternal prenatal depression.

Published in the American Journal of Human Biology, the study suggests that a child's long-term stress physiology may be influenced by conditions experienced in utero.

Low sodium levels are a significant cause for worry in older adults, said experts on Friday, noting that it can lead to headache, confusion, fatigue, restlessness, irritability, and forgetfulness.

Sodium helps to maintain consistent blood pressure. It helps to balance the fluids in the body and also assists in activating muscles and nerves.

Low sodium, known as hyponatremia, often poses significant health risks to the elderly over 60.

The hematopoietic cell transplant team at Osaka Metropolitan University Graduate School of Medicine has developed a novel technique based on a new drug combination that has shown considerable anti-cancer activity with low toxicity for relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients.

Furthermore, the precise immunological study demonstrated how a novel medicine increased anti-cancer activity via altering immune cells.

Relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia, also known as blood cancer, has an extremely poor prognosis due to resistance to anticancer medicines and the patient's organ function. Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation is a method of anti-tumour immunotherapy that can have an anti-cancer impact but is associated with substantial toxicity.

French drug major Sanofi Healthcare India has announced plans to make an investment of about Rs 3,600 crore (400 million euros) in its Global Capacity Centre (GCC) in Hyderabad over the next six years.

About 900 crore (100 million euros) will be invested by 2025.

The company also plans to create 1,600 more jobs by 2026.

Love to play rugby or football? A new study on retired rugby players showed that suffering multiple concussions while playing increased their risk of diseases like Alzheimer's and motor neuron disease (MND).

The study, led by a team from Durham University in the UK showed that these players are likely to have higher levels of certain proteins in their blood, which makes them prone to neurodegenerative diseases.

It also suggests measuring specific biomarkers in athletes' blood to help predict the risk.

"The long-term effects of concussions on rugby players, football players, boxers as well as retired military personnel is a major concern, because of the link to neurodegenerative diseases," said Professor Paul Chazot, from Durham University's Department of Biosciences.