The powerful US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared a body scanner to check whether a person has protein calorie malnutrition, a risk of the highly popular Keto diet.

Impedimed’s (ASX:IPD) scanner SOZO can tell how much and where the fluid is in your body, and what your body composition looks like. These devices are particularly popular in gyms.

The company is now allowed to market it for tracking changes in protein mass.

Ketogenic, or keto, diets typically restrict how much carbohydrates and proteins a person can eat in order to burn fat. A risk of following the diet strictly is protein calorie malnutrition, which can inhibit brain growth and incapacitate the immune system.

Protein calorie malnutrition accounts for 6 million deaths a year, and in the industrialised world it’s mainly seen in hospitals, is associated with disease, or is often found in the elderly.

 

In other ASX health news today:

The government’s ovarian cancer grant has opened, but it’s unclear where the $20m is coming from. The government is directing inquiries to GrantConnect, its grant database, but the two grants it might fall under — Rare Cancers, Rare Diseases and Unmet Need or Reproductive Cancers — are only worth $15m. The Department of Health has been contacted for comment. At least six small caps have ovarian cancer vaccines, treatments or diagnostics in their pipelines.

Cough diagnosis app maker ResApp (ASX:RAP) has got its coughing test onto a telehealth platform run by Australian company Coviu. It says 5,500 clinicians currently use the platform.

The CEO and managing director of Paragon Care (ASX:PGC) quit yesterday. Andrew Just is being replaced by Phil Nicholl, the CEO of Paragon business Surgical Specialties.

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