But since then, other analyses have shown the sensitive testing can sometimes have a false-positive.
Many yield lots of false-positive results, which lead to unnecessary (and risky) treatments.
Patients with high BMIs or with chest pain or pressure at presentation were less likely to have a false-positive activation.
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But false-positive results raise the specter that women could choose to terminate healthy pregnancies if they don't receive appropriate follow-up care.
Now, a new studypublished in the Archives of Internal Medicine finds that the rate of false-positive activations is higher than expected.
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First, PSA levels generally increase with age and can be inflated because of more benign problems in the prostate, leading to false-positive results.
It suggests the test is far more likely to give 'false-positive' readings from cervical, or Pap, tests, than pick up early signs of cancer.
However, efforts to deliver primary PCI to the broadest possible population inevitably result in an increased number of false-positive activations of the cardiac catheterization laboratory.
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If one in 1, 000 people have a disease and the false-positive rate for a test is 5%, then the probability that a person testing positive has the disease is at most 2%.
According to research compiled by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the percentage of false-positive readings is between 7% and 8% for women aged 40 to 59 who took the test.
Professors Laurence Cole and Sigi Rotmensch at Yale University School of Medicine said the false-positive results of the tests were due to the presence of human antibodies, called heterophil antibodies, which are present in a large number of people who do not have cancer.
To be fair, most of the time we're just trying to be nice. (When your girlfriend asks if she looks good in her new dress, most guys--if they know what's good for them--say yes.) Indeed, according to DePaulo's study, such "false-positive" fibs are delivered 10 to 20 times more often than spurious denials of culpability.
The researchers also found there were no false positive results - where cancer is inaccurately thought to be present.
Mark Monitor's Fred Felman says that his group targets more than 500 sites in a typical week and has never had a "false positive, "--in other words, has never mistaken a legitimate site for a phisher.
By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor.
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And it produces a false positive fewer than three times in a million tries--compared with a hundred false positives in a million tries for an automated digital microscope on its own, the current, most accurate method.
One false positive and each pill bottle would have to be examined by hand--no improvement over current bar-coding technology.
Because some legal substances -- such as fertilizers and heart medicines -- can result in "false positives, " Stanley said the ACLU also wants to ensure that people who test positive be treated respectfully.
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