Research published today in Nature from scientists at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah shows how epithelial cells naturally turn over, maintaining constant numbers between cell division and cell death.
Researchers have projected that aggressively lowering blood pressure could help prevent more than 100,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. Experts from the University of Utah and institutions across the country built upon the landmark Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial which found that decreasing blood pressure to 120 mmHg compared to 140 mmHg reduced heart attack, stroke and death in people that were at high risk. Until now, the number of lives that could be saved was unknown.
Evolution is often thought of as a gradual remodeling of the genome, the genetic blueprints for building an organism. But in some instance it might be more appropriate to call it an overhaul. Over the past 100 million years, the human lineage has lost one-fifth of its DNA, while an even greater amount was added, report scientists at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Until now, the extent to which our genome has expanded and contracted had been underappreciated.
Over the past two decades there has been a sharp rise in the number and severity of infections caused by the bacteria Clostridium difficile often shortened to C. diff now the most common hospital acquired infection in the United States. But a new study suggests that the most routinely prescribed antibiotic is not the best treatment for severe cases. Scientists at the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System and University of Utah School of Medicine report that patients with a severe C. diff infection (CDI) were less likely to die when treated with the antibiotic vancomycin compared to the standard treatment of metronidazole.
Once breast cancer spreads through the body, it can degrade a patient’s healthy bones, causing numerous problems. Scientists at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah have identified a new way that bones get destroyed through cancer. And they’ve also learned how to block that destruction with a new drug. Initial tests with patients show promising results.
As many as three out of four surgery patients could be receiving anti-clotting medications that they do not need, according to a study led by investigators at the University of Utah School of Medicine. The research, to be published in Annals of Surgery, challenges standard of care guidelines specifying that all general surgery patients receive anticoagulants.
As commuters shimmy past large, lumbering trucks on the road, they may glance over and wonder, “How safe is that driver next to me?” If the truck driver is in poor health, the answer could be: Not very. Commercial truck drivers with three or more medical conditions double to quadruple their chance for being in a crash than healthier drivers, reports a new study led by investigators at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
Investigators at the University of Utah have identified distinct differences in the hearts of advanced heart failure patients who have defied the odds and showed signs of recovery from the disease. Published online in the journal Circulation, the new findings could help clinicians identify the best candidates for cardiac recovery therapies.
New research from scientists at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah uncovered distinct types of tumors within small cell lung cancer that look and act differently from one another. Scientists also identified a targeted drug combination that worked well with one specific tumor type. The study was published today in Cancer Cell. The findings suggest small cell lung cancer should not be treated as a uniform disease.
Can a failing heart recover? For many years, the answer to that question was unequivocally “No.” But as the University of Utah School of Medicine’s annual Utah Cardiac Recovery Symposium (U-CARS) will explore on Jan. 12-13, advances in treating heart failure are giving physicians, surgeons and researchers reason to hope the deadly disease might one day be defeated. Watch the symposium live online at http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/guvl3
After all the lifting, hauling and wrapping, worn out gift givers may blame the season’s physical strain for any shoulder soreness they are feeling. It turns out there could be another reason. A new study led by investigators at the University of Utah School of Medicine finds that individuals with symptoms that put them at increased risk for heart disease could be more likely to have shoulder problems, including joint pain and rotator cuff injury.
Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah will head an international study to find out how lifestyle and other health factors impact colon and rectal cancer outcomes. HCI was awarded an $8.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to lead and expand an ongoing project in colon cancer research.
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany give to recognize Opitz's lifetime of work as one of the world's foremost authorities in the field of medical genetics.
Scientists from the University of Utah and University of Washington have developed blueprints that instruct human cells to make a virus-like delivery system that shuttles custom cargo from one cell to another. As reported online in Nature on Nov. 30, the research is a step toward a nature-inspired means for bringing therapeutics directly to specific types of cells.
Religious and spiritual experiences activate the brain reward circuits in much the same way as love, sex, gambling, drugs and music, report researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine. The findings will be published Nov. 29 in the journal Social Neuroscience.
The University of Utah College of Pharmacy’s Anticonvulsant Drug Development (ADD) Program has been awarded a five-year $19.5 million contract renewal with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to test drugs to treat epilepsy.
Sessions will explore tackling cancer with precision medicine, the ethics of access and precision medicine, patenting precision medicine and other issues. The symposium comes as increased national attention is being paid to precision medicine, including an initiative by Vice President Joe Biden’s known as “Cancer Moonshot,” which hopes to accelerate the cure for cancer using big data and precision oncology techniques.
For years, scientists have known that someone who is thin could still end up with diabetes. Yet an obese person may be surprisingly healthy. Now, new research published Nov. 3, 2016, in Cell Metabolism online by scientists at University of Utah College of Health points toward an answer to that riddle. Accumulation of a toxic class of fat metabolites, known as ceramides, may increase the risk for type 2 diabetes.
Concerned about both safety and the skyrocketing costs of EpiPen, University of Utah Health Care (UUHC) nurses were already searching for solutions before the media storm hit. At a summer meeting, the group voted to ditch the EpiPen and instead create “epi-kits” that could be used to reverse deadly allergic reactions. With the EpiPen controversy still raging, the switch to “epi-kits” at UUHC comes at just the right time. The kits — which, at $3.50 each, cost less than 1 percent of the EpiPen’s price — are set to roll out to University hospitals and clinics starting on Nov. 1.
In the past decade, ophthalmologists have been prescribing nutritional supplements to be taken daily to prevent or slow vision loss from age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Now, using nutritional supplements for eye health has become more common. But does increasing the recommended dose increase your protection? A case report appearing online in JAMA Ophthalmology from the Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah reveals what can happen when a patient takes more of a supplement than their body needs.
More than 4,000 children and teens are diagnosed with brain cancer each year and the disease kills more children than any other cancer. Writing this week in the journal Cell Reports, researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah report they have identified an existing group of drugs that appear to reduce or eliminate a certain subgroup of childhood brain cancers while sparing normal brain tissue. The research was conducted using a new zebrafish animal model system developed by the researchers, which closely resembles an aggressive subtype of pediatric brain tumors.
"Coffee" was the most tweeted food in the continental U.S. between mid-2014 to mid-2015 followed by "beer" then "pizza". Besides hinting at which foods are popular, scientists at the University of Utah are finding that tweets reveal something about our health. Communities that tweeted more often about physical activities, or expressed positive sentiments about healthy foods, had better overall health.
Parental occupation and neighborhood income influence risks for getting melanoma, breast, cervical and prostate cancers, Huntsman Cancer Institute researchers report.
Researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine and ARUP Laboratories in Salt Lake City unravel the mystery behind a rare Zika-related death in an adult, and unconventional transmission to a second patient in a correspondence published online on September 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Details point to an unusually high concentration of virus in the first patient’s blood as being responsible for his death. The phenomenon may also explain how the second patient may have contracted the virus by casual contact with the primary patient, the first such documented case.
Jody Rosenblatt, Ph.D., a cell biologist at Huntsman Cancer Institute and an associate professor of oncological sciences at the University of Utah has been selected as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Faculty Scholar, HHMI announced today. The award provides $1 million to fund her research over the course of five years.
The Huntsman Center for Health Outcomes and Population Equity (HOPE) will focus on discovering new ways to prevent and treat cancer among underserved populations.
Bucking national trends, a new study reports on a program that is making a difference in healthcare quality and cost. Developed by University of Utah Health Care (UUHC), the so-called value driven outcomes (VDO) program breaks down health procedure costs to the level of each bandage and minutes of nursing time. After addressing inefficiencies exposed in three common procedures - joint replacement, in-hospital laboratory testing, and sepsis management – patients fared better and costs fell by up to 11 percent. The results were published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Sept. 13.
A factor found in umbilical cord blood could become the basis for developing new drugs to fight harmful inflammation, University of Utah School of Medicine researchers report. When given to mice, the newly discovered factor countered signs of inflammation and sepsis, such as fever, fluctuations in respiratory rate, and death. The factor circulates in the blood of newborns for about two weeks after birth and is not found in older babies or adults, according to the study published online Sept. 6, 2016, in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Squirting a simple saline solution into the nose twice a day could alleviate chronic nosebleeds just as effectively as spraying with any one of three different medications, reports a study led by Kevin Whitehead, M.D., F.A.H.A., at the University of Utah School of Medicine and published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The research highlights that there could be benefit to even the simplest of interventions.
The University of Utah joins Vanderbilt, Duke universities in effort to make clnical trials more efficient and get translational research into clinical use faster.
NantHealth, Inc., (Nasdaq: NH), a leading next-generation, evidence-based, personalized healthcare company, today announced that it has partnered with the University of Utah in analyzing the entire genomic profiles of at least 1,000 individuals who have a history of rare and life-threatening diseases and conditions in their respective families. The landmark project will focus on researching the genetic causes of 25 conditions, including, breast, colon, ovarian, and prostate cancers, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), chronic lymphocytic leukemia, autism, preterm birth, epilepsy, and other hereditary conditions. Genomic sequencing will be conducted with unique, comprehensive molecular tests offered by NantHealth.
A University of Utah School of Medicine-led study reports an advance that could increase the accuracy of liquid biopsies. The minimally invasive blood test monitors cancer progression by detecting pieces of circulating tumor DNA, but results can be obscured by abundant DNA from healthy cells. The research published in PLOS Genetics shows that the two types of DNA fragments are typically differently sized in cancer patients, a property that can be exploited to enhance the test’s sensitivity.
Eye cancer took the life of author and neurologist Oliver Sacks last year, bringing attention to the rare, hard-to-treat disease. Now, a team led by scientists at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah report in Cancer Cell that a mutation that causes the cancer relies on a protein, ARF6, to distribute cancer-promoting signals. Further, treatment with a drug made against the protein inhibits eye tumors formation.
Scientists at the University of Utah, ARUP Laboratories, and IDbyDNA, Inc., have developed ultra-fast, meta-genomics analysis software called Taxonomer that dramatically improves the accuracy and speed of pathogen detection. In a paper published today in Genome Biology, the collaborators demonstrated the ability of Taxonomer to analyze the sequences of all nucleic acids in a clinical specimen (DNA and RNA) and to detect pathogens, as well as profile the patient’s gene expression, in a matter of minutes.
Adults with hypertension who are age 75 years and older, including those who are frail and with poor overall health, could benefit from lowering their blood pressure below current medical guidelines. The multi-institutional investigation was published online in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and presented at the American Geriatrics Society Annual Scientific Meeting on May 19. The findings could have broad health implications for older Americans, 75 percent of whom have high blood pressure.
The United States Olympic Committee today announced the addition of the University of Utah Health Care (UUHC) to the National Medical Network. UUHC will serve as a national medical center, specializing in orthopedic medicine, physical medicine, primary care, dentistry, psychiatry, ophthalmology and neurosurgery for elite U.S. athletes. The partnership will also include collaborative research and educational opportunities for athletes at the University of Utah.
Despite studies that claim people with cancer are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease--raising the possibility that what triggers cancer also prevents the neurodegenerative disorder--a new investigation finds a more somber explanation. Many cancer patients don’t live long enough to get Alzheimer’s. The research, led by investigators at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, was published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B.
A study found that 97 percent of confirmed flu cases among babies 6 months and younger occurred in those whose moms were not vaccinated while they were pregnant.
The devastating consequences of sexual trauma in the military reported by 25 percent of female and 1 percent of male veterans who served in the U.S. armed forces are associated with a much higher risk for homelessness
End-stage heart failure patients treated with stem cells harvested from their own bone marrow experienced 37 percent fewer cardiac events - including deaths and heart failure hospital admissions - than a placebo-controlled group, according to a new study. Results from ixCELL-DCM, the largest cell therapy clinical trial for treating heart failure to date, will be presented at the 2016 American College of Cardiology annual meeting and published online in The Lancet on April 4.
Internationally acclaimed clinical scholar, academic leader assumes begins in new role on May 15, 2016.
Inheriting a mutation in the APC gene leads to a nearly 100% lifetime risk of colorectal cancer. While colon cancer can be kept at bay by removing the large intestine, these patients also have up to a 15% risk of getting cancer in the small intestine, which is the leading cause of cancer death in this patient group. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), has identified the first prevention treatment for these patients, a two-drug combination that significantly reduces the number and size of precancerous polyps in the small intestine.
The most common immune disorder, common variable immunodeficiency disorder (CVID), is notoriously difficult to diagnose early, before serious complications develop. Genetic analysis of six families from across the U.S. and Europe has revealed that mutations in IKAROS, known for its central role in immune cell development, define a new class of CVID. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the results open the door to personalized health care tailored to patients with this disorder.
In a search for new antiviral drugs, University of Utah scientists found that a common heart failure medicine, spironolactone, has an unexpected ability to block Epstein Barr virus (EBV), a herpesvirus that causes mononucleosis. The drug blocks a key step in viral infection common to all herpesviruses, revealing that it could be developed into a new class of drug to treat herpesvirus infections including herpes, shingles, and mono. The research was published in PNAS.
A University of Utah biochemist is one of four researchers worldwide to receive a grant from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and the pharmaceutical company Sanofi US Services Inc. to develop glucose-responsive insulin.
Roughly eight percent of our DNA comes from viruses that infected our ancestors millions of years ago. New research by University of Utah geneticists shows that more than an oddity, the viral DNA switches on genes responsible for initiating an immune response. When removed, the innate immune system –a first-responder to infection by pathogens including viruses- does not function properly. The study shows that viral DNA functions in our body by helping us fight infections.
A University of Utah-led initiative to help people with rare and untreatable diseases was highlighted by the White House at the Precision Medicine Initiative Summit today. Patient Empowered Precision Medicine Alliance (PEPMA) will lay the groundwork for a pipeline that rapidly matches patients with rare diseases that are untreatable with current therapies to the right drugs for their condition, at a relatively low cost.
Physicians have long recognized that lab testing isn’t necessary for all hospitalized patients on a daily basis. Regardless, such tests are often conducted because of routine. Published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, University of Utah Health Care developed a tool, Value Driven Outcomes (VDO), to reduce superfluous lab testing. When integrated into a quality improvement initiative lab costs decreased by nearly 10 percent per visit. If applied to all inpatient visits, it was estimated the hospital could save over $1.5 million each year.
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