Research from the Penn Medicine Center for Digital Health and the World Well-Being Project
marries social media data with medical-outcomes data for the first time.
Despite thousands of surgeries taking place each day in the U.S., researchers still don’t know which areas of the brain are responsible for transitioning into unconsciousness and back. Ongoing research at Penn Medicine is looking to find the specific areas of the brain affected by anesthetics and how brains can go “offline” and subsequently come back “online” during a transition on and off anesthesia.
In one of the largest clinical studies to ever examine the impact of using a blood test to detect treatable mutations in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), researchers from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that they could identify significantly more mutations through liquid biopsy instead of a solid tissue biopsy alone. The findings also show that patients whose actionable mutations were detected by the blood based liquid biopsy responded favorably to targeted therapies.
Doctors, nurses and clinical staff will lead efforts to transform the electronic health records at Penn Medicine, recognizing them as a tool just as important as scalpels to modern health care delivery.
A new method for sequencing the chemical groups attached to the surface of DNA is paving the way for better detection of cancer and other diseases in the blood.
For the first time, scientists have performed prenatal gene editing to prevent a lethal metabolic disorder in laboratory animals, offering the potential to treat human congenital diseases before birth.
The Cancer Patient Education Network (CPEN) honored the Patient Education Team from Penn Medicine’s OncoLink with the 2018 Excellence in Patient Education Award.
A twist on the molecular mechanism of how a new cancer drug works could aid in better identifying the best treatments for patients for an array of cancers. The team identified over 500 sites in DNA that require an enzyme called ATR checkpoint kinase to not break when they are replicated.
Penn Medicine experts in nephrology and health policy call for more transparency about joint-venture ownership of dialysis clinics to better understand what impact these arrangements may have on patient referrals and clinical outcomes. The lack of transparency poses a major barrier for evidence-based health care policy research and deprives patients of critical information, the researchers write in a new Perspective published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
An Ivy League experimental rule that moved the kickoff line from the 35- to the 40-yard line and the touchback line from the 25- to the 20-yard line reduced the average annual concussion rate by more than 68 percent, according to the research conducted by a team from The Ivy League and Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
By investigating how genetic variations drive the expression of genes within the filtering cells of the kidney, researchers have found new pathways to explain CKD development and could inform its treatment.
In a study examining the potential impact of 2001-02 Medicaid expansions by Arizona, Maine and New York – expansions that occurred just prior to the rise in overdose mortality nationwide – researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that from the time of these expansions through 2008, overdose mortality rates (mostly driven by fatal overdoses of opioids) rose significantly less in the expansion states than in non-expansion states.
In the largest multi-institutional study to date, led by researchers from Penn Medicine, the team found that among patients who underwent a transcatheter aortic valve replacement, a high number experienced severe and moderate cases of prosthesis-patient mismatch. The team also found that the risk of death and of heart failure readmissions were higher.
A therapeutic vaccine can boost antibodies and T cells, helping them infiltrate tumors and fight off human papillomavirus (HPV)-related head and neck cancer. Researchers from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania tested the immunotherapy approach in two groups of patients with advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCCa) and found 86 percent showed elevated T cell activity.
Hurricane Florence made landfall in North and South Carolina days ago, but Penn Medicine Hospitals and other facilities nationwide have planned for weeks to adapt to expected drug shortages associated with its path of destruction.
Higher education deeply values online learning, but a lung transplant coordinator is now teaching a virtual class that allows the personal caregivers of patients to learn all about their role - and make the patient eligible for the wait list.
A new $18 million grant to Penn Medicine researchers will allow them to take aim at the effects of tobacco marketing. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) have renewed their commitment to the Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS) program and awarded a second cohort (TCORS 2.0) of centers.
he University of Pennsylvania Health System and Grand View Health have announced a new alliance focused on the development of joint clinical care programs to improve health care for people in Bucks and Montgomery counties and the surrounding areas.
– Primary care clinics experienced a significant decline in influenza vaccinations as the day progressed, researchers from Penn Medicine report in a new study published in JAMA Open Network. However, “nudging” clinical staff to order vaccines using a behavioral economics technique known as “active choice” may help curb some of that drop off, the study suggests. The study is the first to show how clinic appointment times can influence influenza vaccination rates.
Penn Medicine and Penn Nursing have launched a formal alliance with the Vingroup – an enterprise that encompasses a newly formed private not-for-profit university project, VinUni, as well as the largest and leading private health service provider in Vietnam, Vinmec – in an effort to improve health care and to create new undergraduate and graduate medical training programs in Vietnam.
Psychopaths, the monsters in the closet of so many of our favorite television shows and podcasts, are far more complex than we might have initially imagined.
Three Penn Medicine ophthalmology innovators received the 2018 António Champalimaud Vision Award for their revolutionary work leading to the first successful gene therapy to cure an inherited cause of childhood blindness.
Teens are more prone to addiction because it’s a form of learning. Just as it’s easier for a younger brain to pick up new languages, athletic techniques, or musical instruments, it’s easier for them to pick up addictions.
The stigma associated with the autoimmune disease psoriasis may lead people to avoid patients who show signs of the condition, including not wanting to date, shake hands, or have people in their homes if they suffer from the disease. New multidisciplinary research involving both psychologists and dermatologists from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania is the first to examine how common this stigma may be among the general population of the United States as well as among medical students.
With medical school loan debt averaging $200,000, many physicians pursue the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program that eliminates federal student loans after 10 years of service in the public sector. But the fate of the program hangs in the balance, as government officials signal a desire to end it, leaving physicians in a lingering uncertainty that’s unnecessary and unfair, health policy experts from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and three other medical institutions argue in a new commentary published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Adding another inhibitor to therapies that cut off a tumor’s access to blood vessels could be the key to helping those therapies overcome resistance in glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain cancer.
The European Commission (EC) has approved a personalized cellular therapy developed at the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center, making it the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy permitted for use in the European Union in two distinct indications.
Although black and Hispanic veterans with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are more likely than white patients to see a kidney specialist—a nephrologist—they are more likely to suffer disease progression from early stage to advanced kidney disease, reports a study published this month in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Nicole O’Donnell says her first love was benzodiazepines. Now, 2 overdoses and nearly a decade of sobriety later, the mother of two is working towards a bachelor's degree in Psychology and is using her personal journey to make a difference in the lives of those struggling with addiction.
The genome sequences of ape parasites related to Plasmodium vivax, the main source of mosquito-borne malaria outside Africa, provide insights on the origin and early evolution of the human parasite. This finding could have implications for better comprehending and eradicating malaria infection worldwide.
A team of researchers from Penn Medicine has developed the first mouse model with an IPF-associated mutation, which induces scarring and other damage similar to what is observed in humans suffering from the condition.
Carl June, MD, a gene therapy pioneer at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, will receive the 2018 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research.
Summer is the season of barbeque, beach trips, and some of the simplest joys of life, but if you’re not careful, it can also be the lone enemy of one of the most important joys of them all: sleep.
The diabetes epidemic in Guatemala is worse than previously thought: more than 25 percent of its indigenous people, who make up 60 percent of the population, suffer from type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, suggests a new study published in PLOS One from researchers at the Penn Center for Global Health.
A class of cancer drugs called PARP inhibitors could be useful for treating and preventing brain disorders, including ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and some forms of frontotemporal degeneration, by halting the misplacement of specific proteins that affect nerve cells.
Sodas, sports drinks, sweetened juices, fast food and grab-and-go vending machine snacks are staples of many American diets, and this fare has become a major contributor to obesity and chronic disease across the nation. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the added sugars from sugary drinks are directly tied to an increased risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Penn Medicine is taking strides to eliminate these foods from its facilities in an effort to ensure that the food its serves aligns with its missions to care for, educate and empower patients who are coping with heart disease, diabetes, and many other illnesses.
Four Penn Medicine postdoctoral trainees have been awarded three-year fellowships through a newly established program, the Michael Brown Penn-GSK Postdoctoral Fellowship Award Program from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline.
The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has received a $2 million gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation to establish the Blavatnik Family Fellowship in Biomedical Research in the Penn Biomedical Graduate Studies (BGS) program.
Checkpoint inhibitor therapies have made metastatic melanoma and other cancers a survivable condition for 20 to 30 percent of treated patients, but clinicians have had very limited ways of knowing which patients will respond. Researchers have uncovered a novel mechanism by which tumors suppress the immune system. Their findings also usher in the possibility that a straightforward blood test could predict and monitor cancer patients’ response to immunotherapy.
Jorge Henao-Mejia will work to uncover how minute organisms in the gut contribute to obesity and type 2 diabetes, findings which could pave the way from new treatments to reduce the ever-growing number of people diagnosed with these serious medical conditions.
The importance of an inclusive workforce culture in health care is key to advancing scientific inquiry, improving the quality of care, and optimizing patient satisfaction. In fact, diverse student bodies and workforces have been shown to improve everyone’s cultural effectiveness and address inequities in health care delivery. Now, inclusiveness of workplace culture can be measured by a concrete set of six factors, according to a study published today in JAMA Network Open from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
A new study using machine learning has identified brain-based dimensions of mental health disorders, an advance towards much-needed biomarkers to more accurately diagnose and treat patients.
A new drug-delivery technology which uses red blood cells to shuttle nano-scale drug carriers, called RBC-hitchhiking, has been found in animal models to dramatically increase the concentration of drugs ferried precisely to selected organs.
The word sabbatical could conjure up all sorts of envy in non-academics who may hear the term and think only of “paid time off.” However, this “time away” is anything but “time off.”