The Power to Tell Your Story

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-Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center have found that education plus counseling was more effective than stand-alone education in increasing understanding about the potential benefits, limitations, and risks of BRCA1 gene testing. However, neither intervention changed the intent to be tested within the study of approximately 400 women interviewed, according to the research report in the Jan. 15 Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

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A Georgetown University study shows that drinking purple grape juice not only has a direct effect on important biological functions like blood clotting, but it also appears to increase plasma levels of valuable antioxidants while decreasing production of a key free radical.

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As Liberia rebuilds a health care system decimated by the 2014 Ebola outbreak, understanding precisely how far citizens live from health facilities and its impact on seeking care can help shape new strategies to improve health care delivery and reduce geographic disparities.

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The Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation has awarded a President’s Grant to Georgetown family medicine physician Ranit Mishori, MD, MHS, FAAFP, to create a comprehensive curriculum to educate health professions students, residents and clinicians about the health needs of immigrants, migrants, torture survivors, asylum seekers and refugees.

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The visual and narrative arts can help physicians hone their observational skills — a critical expertise increasingly needed in today’s medicine, contends a Georgetown University Medical Center family medicine professor.

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Can reading interventions positively impact reading skills and math skills? If so, can the improvement be observed inside the brains of children with combined reading and math disabilities?

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A new study suggests people who speak two languages have more gray matter in the executive control region of the brain.

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In animal models, acupuncture appears to impact the same biologic pathways ramped up by pain and stress, analogous to what drugs do in humans. The researchers say their animal study provides the strongest evidence to date on the mechanism of this ancient Chinese therapy in chronic stress.

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Neuroscientists have found in a small study that although a group of HIV+ older individuals scored “cognitively normal” in standard neuropsychology testing, a scan of their brains tells a different story.

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The largest nationwide clinical trial to study high-dose resveratrol long-term in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease found that a biomarker that declines when the disease progresses was stabilized in people who took the purified form of resveratrol.

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Identifying emerging infectious disease threats and incorporating biosecurity and bioethics in the development of medical technology are the foci of a new grant from the U.S. Department of State awarded to Georgetown’s Irene Jillson, PhD.

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A new animal study shows that traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects the body as well as the brain and that treatment with hypertension drugs blocks the production of proteins related to inflammation.

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Neuroscientists have uncovered the brain malady responsible for tinnitus and for chronic pain — the uncomfortable, sometimes agonizing sensations that persist long after an initial injury.

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An FDA-approved drug for leukemia improved cognition, motor skills and non-motor function in patients with Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia in a small phase I clinical trial, report researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington. In addition, the drug, nilotinib (Tasigna® by Novartis), led to statistically significant and encouraging changes in toxic proteins linked to disease progression (biomarkers).

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Little can be done to help the hundreds of thousands of people whose severe strokes have left them with one arm stuck close to the sides of their bodies like a broken wing. A 30-patient study by Washington researchers, however, has found that magnetically stimulating a specific part of their brains can affect arm movements — raising hope that, in the future, a short course of therapy targeting this area could help to free the arm and restore some use of the stroke-affected limb.

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The results of common medical tests are sometimes delivered to patients by email, letters or voice mail, but are these the most preferred methods? According to one of the first studies to look at this question, the answer is no.

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After a debate that has lasted more than 130 years, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center have found that loss of speech from a stroke in the left hemisphere of the brain can be recovered on the back, right side of the brain. This contradicts recent notions that the right hemisphere interferes with recovery.

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An investigation into how often wheelchair users are killed in car-pedestrian crashes finds they are a third more likely to die than non-wheelchair users; more than half of those deaths occur at intersections.

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“Science fiction is often the driver of science fact.” So says Georgetown neuroethicist James Giordano, PhD, MPhil, (pictured) when asked about one of the most popular science fiction movies, “Star Wars” and the seventh installment: “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” (Opens nationwide 12/18)

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Even as the global malarial pandemic appears to be on a decline, drug resistant malarial parasites are on the rise, says an infectious disease researcher at Georgetown University Medical Center, who is taking the lead on a multi-institutional effort to investigate the causes of this growing concern.

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The 10-question true or false digital quiz, produced by the Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) at Georgetown University, probes the user’s understanding of fertility awareness. “If we could lift the taboos and improve fertility awareness, would people be informed and empowered to make better sexual and reproductive health decisions? At IRH, we believe the answer to this question is ‘yes.’”

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Georgetown University Medical Center neuroscientists say rest — for more than a day — is critical for allowing the brain to reset neural networks and repair any short-term injury. The new study in mice also shows that repeated mild concussions with only a day to recover between injuries leads to mounting damage and brain inflammation that remains evident a year after injury.

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The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), established under the Affordable Care Act, is charged with funding research that ultimately helps patients make better-informed health care decisions. But some at the forefront of such research — primary care physicians — say the grant money is not supporting the PCORI mission.

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PINKconcussions and Georgetown University Medical Center are hosting the first summit to explore gender differences of female brain injuries including symptoms, treatment and recovery to develop a better model of care. The International Summit on Female Concussion and Traumatic Brain Injury will be held Saturday, Jan. 27 at Georgetown University.

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When physicians, researchers and scientists gather at Georgetown University later this month, they will tackle what they say is an under-appreciated medical issue: brain concussions in girls and women. Former college athlete Melissa Coyne knows what a sports-related concussion can do.

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Two drugs that mimic a common plant hormone effectively cause DNA damage and turn off a major DNA repair mechanism, suggesting their potential use as an anti-cancer therapy.

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The Huntington’s Disease Society of America has designated the Huntington Disease Care, Education and Research Center at Georgetown as an HDSA Center of Excellence for 2016. The designation comes with a grant to support services for Huntington disease patients and their families at the center, a collaboration between Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital with generous support from the Griffin Foundation.

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Rapid testing for the Zika virus is a critical need in the recent Ebola-affected countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, says a Georgetown University professor, because of the recent Zika outbreak on nearby Cape Verde and the similarity in symptoms between Zika and early Ebola.

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Georgetown University researchers are reporting the first case of Alzheimer’s disease diagnosed in an HIV-positive individual. The finding in a 71-year-old man triggers a realization about HIV survivors now reaching the age when Alzheimer’s risk begins to escalate.

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Safe levels of electrical stimulation can enhance your capacity to think more creatively, according to a new study by Georgetown researchers.

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Skilled readers can quickly recognize words when they read because the word has been placed in a visual dictionary of sorts which functions separately from an area that processes the sounds of written words, say Georgetown University Medical Center neuroscientists. The visual dictionary idea rebuts a common theory that our brain needs to “sound out” words each time we see them.

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The manner in which pharmaceutical companies market their products to people who have hemophilia appears unprecedented and direct-to-consumer marketing should be examined by regulators, say researchers who reviewed documents, including consumer-oriented materials, produced by the makers of hemophilia treatment products.

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In what is believed to be the first study of its kind, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center’s Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) are recruiting as many as 1,200 women to study a smartphone app that calculates a woman’s chance for pregnancy on a daily basis.

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You might not want to depend on your smartphone app alone to help you avoid or achieve pregnancy, say the authors of a new study. A review of nearly 100 fertility awareness apps finds that most don’t employ evidence-based methodology.

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A small phase I study provides molecular evidence that an FDA-approved drug for leukemia significantly increased brain dopamine and reduced toxic proteins linked to disease progression in patients with Parkinson’s disease or dementia with Lewy bodies.

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Eleven years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine, medical journalist Susan Okie, MD, first introduced readers to two U.S. Army veterans who suffered traumatic brain injuries in Iraq, and the challenges they faced in the recovery period after returning home. In the July 14 issue of the NEJM, Okie describes her follow-up interviews with the soldiers, and the slow journey to recovery that continues more than a decade later.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that the Zika virus has been transmitted by mosquito to a person in the continental United States, marking a moment in global health history so many predicted. Despite the advance warning of Zika’s approach, Georgetown experts in infectious disease, public health law and health systems readiness say the United States isn’t ready for a Zika outbreak.

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Resveratrol, given to Alzheimer’s patients, appears to restore the integrity of the blood-brain barrier, reducing the ability of harmful immune molecules secreted by immune cells to infiltrate from the body into brain tissues, say researchers. The reduction in neuronal inflammation slowed the cognitive decline of patients, compared to a matching group of placebo-treated patients with the disorder.

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An FDA approved drug to treat renal cell carcinoma appears to reduce levels of a toxic brain protein linked to dementia in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases when given to animals. This finding is the latest from Georgetown University Medical Center’s Translational Neurotherapeutics Program (TNP) examining tyrosine kinase inhibitors in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.