Ever felt a little lost looking at your blood test results? You’re not alone. Blood tests sound like a foreign language with all those numbers and medical terms that make very little sense. But ...

The tests look for bits of altered DNA that cancer cells shed into the bloodstream. The screening technology holds hope of finding cancers early, when they might be cured.

A new generation of Alzheimer’s blood tests could speed up diagnosis and access to care—but they also raise thorny questions ...

Your doctor just mentioned ordering a comprehensive metabolic panel, and you’re wondering what that means and why you need it. Don’t worry — this isn’t some scary, complicated procedure. It’s actually ...

Just one drop of blood could reveal if you have pancreatic cancer. A new test called PAC-MANN can pick up signs of the disease in people’s blood, even at an early stage, researchers report February 12 ...

False positive PSA results cause unneeded treatments. An expert panel has recommended against routine blood screening for prostate cancer, in a report published Wednesday in The BMJ. The panel, ...

What Is an MCV Blood Test? MCV stands for mean corpuscular volume. An MCV blood test measures the average size of red blood cells, which have the critical job of carrying oxygen to your organs. If ...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide expert advice on some of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and world. Our ...

With two new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease approved in recent years, there’s growing hope for people at risk of the memory-robbing condition. But tests to detect the condition still lag behind.