The first oral medication for multiple sclerosis was approved today by the Food & Drug Administration. Physicians praised the decision to approve the drug, called fingolimod, saying it would give multiple sclerosis patients new options for treatment.
Three out of five residents surveyed came to work while sick, possibly exposing their patients and colleagues to suboptimal performance and communicable disease. One out of three did so more than once. At one hospital, 100 percent of residents worked when sick. More than half of resident physicians surveyed said they didn't have time to see a doctor.
Changing how a person perceives and thinks about others was the most effective intervention for loneliness, a sweeping analysis of previous research has determined. The findings may help physicians and psychologists develop better treatments for loneliness, a known risk factor for heart disease and other health problems.
Many middle-aged and older adults with diabetes are sexually active, according to a new survey. Seventy percent of partnered men with diabetes and 62 percent of partnered women with diabetes engaged in sexual activity two or three times a month, comparable to those without diabetes. The disease takes a toll, however, on the desire for and rewards of sexual activity.
Two studies point to a new way to a vaccinate against drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- also known as MRSA. One counteracts the bacteria's tools for evading the immune system; the other disrupts the germ's tissue-damaging mechanism. The combination may protect people from MRSA and provide lasting immunity.
One of the largest and most comprehensive collaborations to understand the structure and dynamic function of membrane proteins was officially launched Tuesday with a 5-year, $22.5 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
A genetic variant implicated in several cancers by genome-wide association studies (GWAS) has been found to drive increased expression of a known oncogene in the prostate.
Twenty-five families who have overcome diabetes caused by a single-gene defect will gather at "Celebrating the Miracles," a University of Chicago symposium for patients, parents and physicians, designed to review scientific studies, celebrate treatment successes, stress the importance of a genetic diagnosis, and exchange tips on life without insulin injections.
More than 20 percent of deaths in a study of 12,000 Bangladeshis were attributable to arsenic exposure from contaminated drinking water, new research reports. The large 10-year study is the first to prospectively measure the relationship between individual exposure to arsenic and its associated mortality risk.
A rare but fatal disease of blood vessels in the lung may be caused in part by aberrant silencing of genes rather than genetic mutation, new research reports. University of Chicago researchers have now found that a form of epigenetics – the modification of gene expression – causes the disease in an animal model and could contribute to the disease in humans.
Every cell contains machinery for self-destruction, used to induce death when damaged or sick. But according to a new research study, a receptor thought to mediate cell suicide in normal cells may actually be responsible for the unrestrained growth of cancerous tumors.
A mass extinction of fish 360 million years ago hit the reset button on Earth's life, setting the stage for modern vertebrate biodiversity, a new study reports. The mass extinction scrambled the species pool near the time at which the first vertebrates crawled from water towards land, University of Chicago scientists report.
A new class of cancer drugs can be used effectively while minimizing hypertensive side effects if patients' blood pressure is closely monitored and controlled, a clinical panel has determined.
Driven by his mother's health questions and the difficulty of providing simple, reliable answers, Shantanu Nundy, MD, a resident in internal medicine, has collected all of the "generally accepted truths" about preventing disease, organized them into checklists based on age, and published them as Stay Healthy at Every Age.
Nearly 1 in 10 primary care physicians has experienced a conflict with a religiously-affiliated hospital or practice over religious policies for patient care. Most feel that when clinical judgment conflicts with religious hospital policy, physicians should refer patients to another institution.
Daniel Sulmasy, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Ethics in the Dept. of Medicine and the Divinity School, and Assoc. Dir. of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, has been named to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.
Mitchell Posner, MD, the Thomas D. Jones Professor and vice chairman of surgery and section chief of general and oncologic surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center, was sworn in as president of the Society of Surgical Oncology on March 6, 2010, at the Society's annual business meeting in St Louis.
At age 55, men can expect another 15 years of sexual activity, but women that age should expect less than 11 years, according to a study by University of Chicago researchers published March 10 by the British Medical Journal. Men in good or excellent health at 55 can add 5 to 7 years to that number. Equally healthy women gain slightly less, 3 to 6 years.
A paralyzed patient implanted with a brain-computer interface device has allowed scientists to determine the relationship between brain waves and attention. The experiments, published this week in the journal Neuron, reveal the intricate dynamics of the attentive brain.
A new assay capable of examining hundreds of proteins at once and enabling new experiments that could dramatically change our understanding of cancer and other diseases has been invented by a team of University of Chicago scientists.
Sleeping is known to help humans stabilize information and tasks learned during the preceding day. Now, researchers have found that sleep has similar effects upon learning in starlings, a discovery that will open up future research into how the brain learns and preserves information.
A Chicago research team is one year into a three-year project to collect and analyze the genetic sequence and variations of every gene expressed by 1,000 tumors with a long-term goal of translating genomic discoveries into diagnostic tools and therapeutic strategies.
In the next 25 years, the number of Americans living with diabetes will double and spending on diabetes will triple, rising from $113 billion to $336 billion. This will add to the existing strains on an overburdened health care system.
Although morphine has been the gold-standard treatment for postoperative and chronic cancer pain for two centuries, a growing body of evidence is showing that opiate-based painkillers can stimulate the growth and spread of cancer cells. Two new studies show that shielding cancer cells from opiates reduces proliferation, invasion and migration.
A genetic search using patients and mouse models has uncovered an unlikely gene involved in Dandy-Walker malformation, a common birth defect which causes mental retardation, motor delays and sometimes autism. This newly discovered function of the gene, which is never expressed in the brain, reveals a novel role for the skull in directing brain development.
Advances in neonatal care enable two-thirds of premature babies born with respiratory problems to be ready for school at an appropriate age, but those living in poverty are far less likely to be ready on time. Although several medical factors were associated with lower school readiness, the most powerful factor was low socioeconomic status.
A comparison of the effects of estrogen and retinoic acid, a derivative of vitamin A, on the genome of breast cancer cells showed that they have a "yin-yang" effect, with estrogen tipping the scales towards cell proliferation and retinoic acid inhibiting cellular growth. The finding could lead researchers to a new set of drug targets for this disease.
Results from a small, early clinical trial show that combining grapefruit juice with the drug rapamycin can be effective in treating various types of cancer. The grapefruit juice increases drug levels, allowing lower doses of the drug to be given.
A multi-center study of prostate cancer patients appearing in today's Journal of Urology recommends that for some men diagnosed with low-risk prostate cancer, opting not to initially receive treatment can be safe if they are closely monitored.
Large-scale data mining of gene networks in fruit flies has led researchers to a sensitive and specific diagnostic biomarker for human renal cell carcinoma, the most common type of kidney cancer. The biomarker known as SPOP is produced by 99 percent of clear cell renal cell carcinomas but not by normal kidney tissue.
One extra hour of sleep per night appears to decrease the risk of coronary artery calcification, an early step down the path to cardiovascular disease. Calcified arteries were found in 27 percent of those who slept less than five hours a night, 11 percent of those who slept five to seven hours and six percent of those who slept more than seven hours a night.
At least one in 25 older adults, about 2.2 million people in the United States, take multiple drugs in combinations that can produce a harmful drug-drug interaction, and half of these interactions involve a non-prescription medication.
Learning how leukemia takes over privileged "niches" within the bone marrow is helping researchers develop treatment strategies that could protect healthy blood-forming stem cells and improve the outcomes of bone marrow transplantation for leukemia and other types of cancer.
An international coalition of physicians and researchers has developed new systems to standardize studies of neuroblastomas across the world. The International Neuroblastoma Risk Group outlines the new systems to enable faster processing of clinical trials and identification of optimal treatments for this sometimes hard-to-manage form of pediatric cancer.
A 10-year-old girl born with an abnormally small bladder that made her incontinent has become the first patient to benefit from a new robotic-assisted bladder-reconstruction procedure. The surgeons describe the case in the December 2008 issue of Urology. They have now performed the operation six times.
A study from corresponding author Monica Peek, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago Medical Center, finds that heightened cultural sensitivity training for physicians and caregivers could influence African-American women to get mammograms. Better communication is also needed to encourage this high-risk patient group to get screened for breast cancer.
The 20th annual conference of The MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago will honor the Center's founder and director, Mark Siegler, MD, and examine his work and influence on the field.
Because of the increased number of patients, growing reliance on multiple medications and the shift toward more expensive new medicines, the annual cost of diabetes drugs nearly doubled in only six years, rising from $6.7 billion in 2001 to $12.5 billion in 2007. The single greatest contributor was the use of newer, more expensive medications.
In the last two years a team at the University of Chicago Medical Center has been able to wean more than 30 children who appeared to have type-1 diabetes off of insulin. This is not a miracle cure but a clever application of modern genetics and the tweaking of ion channels.
Scientists from London, Cambridge and Chicago have identified one of the smallest dinosaur skulls ever discovered as coming from a very young Heterodontosaurus, an early dinosaur. This juvenile weighed about 200 grams. This skull suggests how and when the family of herbivorous dinosaurs that includes Heterodontosaurus made the transition from eating meat to eating plants.
Newly exposed parts of Tiktaalik roseae, the intermediate fossil between fish and the first animals to walk out of water onto land, are revealing how this evolutionary event happened. The first detailed look at the internal head skeleton of Tiktaalik shows how it was gaining structures that allowed it to support itself on solid ground and breathe air.
Two innovative programs--the Pritzker Initiative and REACH--are transforming the curriculum at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine and attracting young physicians to practice in underserved communities.
Microwave ovens should be equipped with safety controls to prevent children from opening them and being burned by hot foods and drinks, according to a study by University of Chicago Medical Center researchers.
A new magnetic resonance imaging procedure can detect very early breast cancer in mice, including ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a precursor to invasive cancer. Some of the tumors detected were less than 300 microns in diameter, the smallest cancers ever detected by MRI.
A study, based on DNA-sequence comparison of thousands of bacterial samples collected from human patients and animal carriers, found that 97 percent of campylobacteriosis cases sampled in Lancashire, UK, were caused by bacteria typically found in chicken and livestock.
The first objective study on the effect that on-call workloads have on the quality of the education medical residents receive found that the complexity of care patients require has just as much impact on residents' training as the number of hours they work.
The NIGMS has awarded more than $15 million to the University of Chicago to support The Chicago Center for Systems Biology--to study how networks of genes work together to enable cells and organisms to respond to change. The Chicago Biomedical Consortium, with support from The Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust, will provide an additional $3 million.
The largest study to date of testing errors reported by family physician offices in the United States found that problems occur throughout the testing process and disproportionately affect minority patients.
Precisely targeted radiation therapy can eradicate all evidence of disease in selected patients with cancer that has spread to only a few sites, suggests the first published report from an ongoing clinical trial. Radiation therapy controlled all signs of cancer in 21 percent of patients who had five or fewer disease sites.
On June 16, 2008, Barbara Ganschow of Palatine, IL, became the first person in the world to be successfully treated with a new device designed to make it safer and easier for heart specialists to create a hole in the cardiac atrial septum. The hole, created by the NRGTM Transseptal Needle, allows cardiac catheters to cross from the right side of the heart to the left side.
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