Medical School News and Research

RSS

Brain's pleasure and reward circuitry gets a big boost after a sleepless night

A sleepless night can make us cranky and moody. But a lesser known side effect of sleep deprivation is short-term euphoria, which can potentially lead to poor judgment and addictive behavior, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley.

24 Mar 2011

Study reveals genetic marker for surviving sepsis

New research in the April issue of Anesthesiology shows for the first time a genetic marker in patients who have a greater likelihood of surviving sepsis.

24 Mar 2011

Zebrafish model of human melanoma reveals new cancer gene

Looking at the dark stripes on the tiny zebrafish you might not expect that they hold a potentially important clue for discovering a treatment for the deadly skin disease melanoma. Yet melanocytes, the same cells that are are responsible for the pigmentation of zebrafish stripes and for human skin color, are also where melanoma originates.

24 Mar 2011

Physicians launch international advocacy campaign on TB

Physicians across the globe are coming together to advocate for a large, underrepresented patient population - those suffering from tuberculosis. On World TB Day, March 24th, a team of physician and researchers led by Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine's Tuberculosis Research Unit will nationally launch "I am TB," an international advocacy campaign aimed at reducing stigma among patients with TB and those at risk for the disease.

24 Mar 2011

Fudan, UTHealth introduce international network to fight against scleroderma

Scleroderma clinicians and researchers in the United States and China have launched an international network to fight this debilitating disease that affects more than one million people worldwide.

24 Mar 2011

Scientists reveal protein target that can trigger myocarditis

People with type 1 diabetes, whose insulin-producing cells have been destroyed by the body's own immune system, are particularly vulnerable to a form of inflammatory heart disease caused by a different autoimmune reaction.

24 Mar 2011

U-M professors recommend certain steps to reach research equipoise

In 1998, a study linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism in children appeared in a respected medical journal. For a decade, the study grabbed headlines worldwide.

23 Mar 2011

ViroPharma presents Cinryze data against HAE at AAAAI Annual Meeting

ViroPharma Incorporated today announced data presented in two poster presentations relating to Cinryze at the 2011 American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting, March 18 through 22, in San Francisco, CA.

23 Mar 2011

AHA to honor BIDMC investigator for groundbreaking Vascular Biology research

Alterations in blood vessel dilation lie at the heart of coronary artery health: When vessels dilate, blood and oxygen supplies successfully reach the heart. When vessels contract, blood and oxygen are diminished, leading to coronary artery disease.

23 Mar 2011

Medical oncologist to receive AACR award for breast cancer research

Vassiliki Karantza, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey will be honored with the Genentech BioOncology Career Development Award sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research at the Association's 102nd Annual Meeting taking place April 2 through 6 in Orlando.

23 Mar 2011

WMU receives $100 million cash gift for new medical school

A $100 million cash gift, the largest ever made to a Michigan college or university, will be used to give birth to a private medical school at a public institution--Western Michigan University.

23 Mar 2011

Oral desensitization with omalizumab may treat milk allergy in children

Some 3 million children in the United States have some form of food allergy, ranging in severity from mild to life-threatening. Milk allergy is the most common, affecting 2.5 percent of children under age 3.

22 Mar 2011

Study: Stem cell transplant may benefit patients with rapidly progressive MS

A long term study reports about the effectiveness of replacing bone marrow, purposely destroyed by chemotherapy, with autologous stem cell rescue for people with aggressive forms of multiple sclerosis.

22 Mar 2011

New research: Trauma patients treated on weekends have greater chance of survival

Patients who've been hurt in car or bike crashes, been shot or stabbed, or suffered other injuries are more likely to live if they arrive at the hospital on the weekend than during the week, according to new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine research published in the March 21 issue of Archives of Surgery.

22 Mar 2011

Study unravels molecular mechanism of biomolecule RNA that plays dynamic regulatory role in protein selection

If a big bunch of your brain cells suddenly went rogue and decided to become fat cells, it could cloud your decision-making capacity a bit. Fortunately, early in an organism's development, cells make firm and more-or-less permanent decisions about whether they will live their lives as, say, skin cells, brain cells or, well, fat cells.

21 Mar 2011

NasVax reports positive results from Phase 2a trial of oral immunotherapy for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis

NasVax announces the success of a Phase 2a clinical trial of a new oral immunotherapy for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), an inflammatory disease associated with fatty liver disease and the metabolic syndrome.

21 Mar 2011

Elevations in 5 amino acids may signal future disease risk

Measuring the levels of small molecules in the blood may be able to identify individuals at elevated risk of developing type 2 diabetes as much as a decade before symptoms of the disorder appear.

21 Mar 2011

U-M professor shows how plasticity of brain restores critical functions related to learning, memory

When Geoffrey Murphy, Ph.D., talks about plastic structures, he's not talking about the same thing as Mr. McGuire in The Graduate. To Murphy, an associate professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Michigan Medical School, plasticity refers to the brain's ability to change as we learn.

19 Mar 2011

Reports highlight global state of TB epidemic, concerns over drug-resistant TB

Increasing rates of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis "are hampering world health programs aimed at tackling TB and threaten to wipe out progress made against the disease, scientists said on Friday," Reuters reports (Kelland, 3/18).

19 Mar 2011

New insight into Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Armed with a zebrafish model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy and a library of 1,200 chemicals already approved for human use, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have identified a compound that reverses the loss of muscle structure and function associated with DMD, seemingly by compensating for the loss of a critical protein.

19 Mar 2011