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The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has released new guidelines for colorectal cancer screening that urge annual screening for people ages 50 to 75 and specifiy the type of test and screening interval recommended. The USPSTF also newly recommends when to stop regular colorectal screening, advising against screening patients older than 85 and recommending that those between the ages of 76 and 85 consider individual health status, results of prior screening, and life expectancy before getting screened. Click here for more information.

An experimental test may someday tell pregnant women if their fetuses have particular genetic defects that cause serious problems in mental and physical development, without the risk of miscarriage posed by current diagnostic methods, according to recent research. The new approach, described in the October 6 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, determines whether the fetus has aneuploidy by testing a sample of the mother’s blood for pieces of fetal DNA.

More people should be tested for chronic hepatitis B, a major cause of liver diseases including cancer, advise new recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a consensus statement from the National Institutes of Health in an effort to spur more early diagnosis of chronic hepatitis B virus infection.

New guidelines from two major endocrinology organizations recommend strategies for diagnosis and management of prediabetes.