All posts tagged: King’s College London

Blood-based aging clock predicts dementia risk years before symptoms

Blood-based aging clock predicts dementia risk years before symptoms

Published by Jenni Sidey

A person’s body can age faster than the calendar suggests, and that gap may carry important clues about dementia risk. In a study of more than 220,000 UK Biobank participants, researchers at King’s College London found that people whose biological age appeared older than their chronological age were more likely to develop dementia over time. They were also more likely to develop it sooner. The pattern was especially strong for vascular dementia, a form linked to reduced blood flow in the brain. The work points to a simple idea with large consequences. Two people may be the same age on paper, but one may show signs of faster internal aging in the blood. That difference, the researchers say, could help identify people who face a greater chance of dementia before symptoms begin. “Our findings suggest that biological ageing data can help identify individuals at risk of dementia before clinical symptoms emerge,” said lead author Dr. Julian Mutz, King’s Prize Research Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London. “By combining …

Dentists are becoming an unexpected front line in diabetes screening

Dentists are becoming an unexpected front line in diabetes screening

Published by Jenni Sidey

A finger-prick during a dental appointment may seem far removed from diabetes care. Yet in a new UK study, that small test picked up something many patients did not know about: blood sugar levels in the pre-diabetes or diabetes range. Researchers at King’s College London found that more than 35 percent of dental patients with no self-reported history of diabetes had raised HbA1c levels, a marker of average blood sugar over the previous two to three months. The finding came from a chairside test that produced results in about six minutes and was used during routine care at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. That matters because diabetes and pre-diabetes are rising steadily, and many cases still go undiagnosed. According to Diabetes UK, nearly 1.3 million people in the UK could be living with type 2 diabetes without knowing it. The testing machine which can be used during dental appointments. (CREDIT: KCL) A test that fits the dental chair The study included 911 patients from the King’s College London Oral, Dental and Craniofacial Biobank. …

Motion sensors perform better when attached to loose clothing

Motion sensors perform better when attached to loose clothing

Published by Jenni Sidey

When your arm moves inside a loose shirt, the fabric does not simply follow along. It ripples, folds, and shifts in ways that exaggerate motion. Those subtle distortions, long treated as measurement errors, may actually carry more useful information than the movement of the body itself. That idea sits at the center of new research from King’s College London, published in Nature Communications, which challenges a basic assumption behind modern motion tracking. Sensors do not have to be tight against the skin to work well. In many cases, they perform better when attached to loose clothing. The findings suggest a different future for wearable technology, one that could make health monitoring devices less intrusive while improving accuracy across fields ranging from medicine to robotics. Researchers found that sensors attached to loose fabric predicted and captured human movement with about 40 percent greater accuracy while requiring roughly 80 percent less data than sensors fixed directly to the body. Stages of human movement recognition and prediction. (CREDIT: Nature Communications) Dr Matthew Howard, a reader in engineering at …