A new, faster test can reveal if a person has tuberculosis (TB). It also can tell if the disease is resistant to antibiotics. The new test takes less than two hours. The old one could take up to a week. The old test also misses cases of TB, so sick people are mistakenly told they are healthy. In a study of 1,730 people, the new test identified 98% of TB cases. It also identified 98% of the cases that were resistant to rifampin, a common drug used to treat TB. Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection. It causes more than 1.8 million deaths each year. The new test is not the same as the skin test. The skin test is done to see if someone has ever been exposed to TB. The new test would be done in people who have TB symptoms. The study about the test appeared in the September 1 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The Associated Press wrote about it the same day.

Women with BRCA gene mutations can benefit from having healthy ovaries removed. So says the largest study of its kind, published September 1 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Women with these gene mutations have 10 times the risk of ovarian cancer, compared with the general population. The study included about 2,500 women. About 4 in 10 had their ovaries removed. Over the next four years, these women had lower risks of ovarian and breast cancer, compared with similar women who did not have the surgery. They also had a lower risk of dying. The Associated Press wrote about the study September 1.

A new study suggests that African-Americans have almost three times the risk of having a heart attack after having a drug-coated stent placed to treat their chest pain, compared to other races. Bare metal stents seem to be safer options. The medical journal Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association published the study on August 30.