• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and international collaborators have evidence that Kawasaki Disease (KD) does not have a single cause. By studying weather patterns and geographical distributions of patients in San Diego, the research team determined that this inflammatory disease likely has multiple environmental triggers influenced by a combination of temperature, precipitation and wind patterns.

• share
• favorite_border

UC San Diego Health has been named “HealthCare’s Most Wired” by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME). The mission of the CHIME HealthCare’s Most Wired program is to elevate the health and health care of communities around the world through the optimal use of information technology.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Kaiser Permanente have discovered that mothers who breastfed a child or children for six months or more are at lower risk for developing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) years later during mid-life. With no other current prevention options aside from a healthy lifestyle, they say the finding may represent an early modifiable risk factor for a serious and chronic disease.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

For the first time, the United States Department of Defense (DOD) has awarded a grant to researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine to study binge eating disorder treatments in veterans and active duty military.

• share
• favorite_border

The mechanism leading to development of type 1 diabetes remains a mystery, hampering the ability to find new ways to prevent, treat or even cure this condition. With a new $3.3 million grant, University of California School of Medicine researchers hope to create a high resolution reference map of pancreatic cells that will identify molecular changes that arise during type 1 diabetes.

• share
• favorite_border

Using a novel biomarker panel to track and measure kidney function, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and University of California San Francisco School of Medicine report that lowering systolic blood pressure to less than 120 mm Hg does not damage the kidney organ itself. Instead, any negative changes to clinical results are more likely due to decreased blood flow.

• share
• favorite_border

Steffanie Strathdee, PhD, associate dean of global health sciences at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, was named today one of TIME magazine’s 50 Most Influential People in Health Care for 2018, which identifies people who “have changed the state of health care in America this year, and bear watching for what they do next.”

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with statewide collaborators, report that patients who recorded videos of themselves taking tuberculosis (TB) medications better adhered to treatment than patients who were observed in-person.

• share
• favorite_border

Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at UC San Diego Health, professor of medicine and associate dean for informatics and technology at the School of Medicine, and a founding faculty member of UC San Diego Halicioğlu Data Science Institute, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

• share
• favorite_border

Tamara Strauss has been living with high-grade, stage IV pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer for more than three years. Current treatments, although effective for her, are highly toxic. Tamara enrolled in a first-of-its-kind, pilot study at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health to test a personalized vaccine using her unique cancer mutations to boost an anti-tumor immune response.

• share
• favorite_border

Early adoption of tobacco control efforts in California lead to fewer people ever smoking, reduced the amount used by those who do smoke and helped smokers quit at a younger age — when their risk of developing lung cancer is lowest. As a result, lung cancer deaths are 28 percent lower in California compared to the rest of the country and the gap is widening each year by almost a percentage point.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

On Monday, October 15, UC San Diego Health will open a new comprehensive health center located at 16950 Via Tazon in Rancho Bernardo. Described as a “clinic of the future,” the new 57,000 square foot facility will offer patients increased access to a team of top doctors and nurses, and an array of convenient services, such as urgent care and advanced imaging, including a pharmacy and optical boutique.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with collaborators across the country, report that people who participate in dementia prevention trials are primarily motivated by altruism and pleased to help.

• share
• favorite_border

Starting in the fall of 2018, UC San Diego Health will be the first health system in San Diego County to implement a policy ensuring that all mandatory reporters are responsible for reporting cases of suspected human trafficking. This policy will be a coordinated effort of administrative and professional staff at all points of entry into the health system.

• share
• favorite_border

Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) are complex carbohydrates that are highly abundant and unique to human milk. Accumulating evidence indicates that exposure to HMOs in the postnatal period has both immediate and long-term benefits to infant health and development. Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine report for the first time that HMOs are also present in amniotic fluid.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

The National Institute on Aging has awarded scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and San Diego State University with a five-year, $4 million grant to boost the number of Latino and other underrepresented minority researchers studying Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias afflicting seniors of Latino origins, a demographic historically overlooked.

• share
• favorite_border

In the wake of media and public reports about increased mortality linked to a new drug for treating Parkinson’s disease psychosis, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine conducted a retrospective study of qualifying patients in the UC San Diego Health system concluding that the new drug, pimavanserin (marketed as Nuplazid), did not pose a statistically significant greater risk of death.

• share
• favorite_border

In a study publishing September 26 in Science Advances, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences report that tweaking factors in a cystic fibrosis lung model, such as pH balance and oxygen, helped eradicate pathogenic bacteria while minimizing risks of antibiotic resistance and overgrowth of other microorganisms.

• share
• favorite_border

Access to world class care is now easier, faster and at the fingertips of UC San Diego Health patients and loved ones. With the new MyUCSDHealth mobile application, patients have the ability to manage their health information and communicate with their physicians while family members and friends can find helpful resources, such as visiting hours, directions and parking information.

• share
• favorite_border

More than 100 UC San Diego Health physicians have been named as “Top Docs” in the 2018 San Diego Magazine “Physicians of Exceptional Excellence” survey, an annual opportunity for doctors across the region to vote for much-admired colleagues.

• share
• favorite_border

Using a bioinformatics approach, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers found that CD4+ T cell’s binding partner, a molecule called MHC-II, may have even more influence on emerging tumors than MHC-I, the better known partner of CD8+ T cells. The finding, published September 20 in Cell, may help researchers improve cancer immunotherapies and predict which patients will respond best.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have unraveled new insights into the way cells leverage G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and their cellular waste disposal systems to control inflammation. The findings, published September 18 in Cell Reports, suggest some existing cancer drugs that inhibit these cellular activities might be repurposed to treat vascular inflammation, which occurs when artery-blocking plaques form in atherosclerosis.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at University of California School of Medicine are preparing to launch a novel clinical trial to examine the safety, efficacy and pharmacological properties of cannabis as a potential treatment for adults with essential tremor (ET). Currently, ET is treated using repurposed medications originally developed for high blood pressure or seizures.

• share
• favorite_border

On Saturday, October 6, hundreds of hackers are expected to descend upon the University of California San Diego campus to put their collaborative problem-solving capabilities to the test.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of California San Diego have now identified three new molecular drug targets in Naegleria fowleri and a number of drugs that are able to inhibit the amoeba’s growth in a laboratory dish. Several of these drugs are already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for other uses, such as antifungal agents, the breast cancer drug tamoxifen and antidepressant Prozac.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have discovered using mice and human clinical specimens, that caspase-2, a protein-cleaving enzyme, is a critical driver of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a chronic and aggressive liver condition. By identifying caspase-2’s critical role, they believe an inhibitor of this enzyme could provide an effective way to stop the pathogenic progression that leads to NASH — and possibly even reverse early symptoms.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of California San Diego say they have dramatically advanced the science of biometric identification, creating a novel technology that can capture the fingerprints of infants and children, even on the first day of birth.

• share
• favorite_border

Two to three million years ago, the functional loss of a single gene triggered a series of changes in what would eventually become the modern human species. Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine report on studies of mice engineered to lack the same gene and resulting data that suggest the lost gene may also have contributed to humanity’s well-documented claim to be among the best long-distance runners in the animal kingdom.

• share
• favorite_border

Macrophages are immune cells that are supposed to protect the body from infection by viruses and bacteria. Yet Zika virus preferentially infects these cells. Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have now unraveled how the virus shuts down the genes that make macrophages function as immune cells.

• share
• favorite_border

Progress in treating chronic illness, where the cause of the problem is often unknown, has lagged. Chronic conditions like cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease defy easy explanation, let alone remedy. In a new paper, a researcher at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, posits that chronic disease is essentially the consequence of the natural healing cycle becoming blocked, specifically by disruptions at the metabolic and cellular levels.

• share
• favorite_border

Writing in the current online issue of the journal Stem Cells and Development, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine describe development of a rapid, cost-effective method to create human cortical organoids directly from primary cells.

• share
• favorite_border

Over the next five years, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, will award approximately $20 million to four academic centers to launch a new national Career Development Consortium for Excellence in Glycosciences.

• share
• favorite_border

Writing in advance of the September 15 issue of Neural Computation, Beatrice Golomb, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, says publicly reported symptoms and experiences of a “mystery illness” afflicting American and Canadian diplomats in Cuba and China strongly match known effects of pulsed radiofrequency/microwave electromagnetic (RF/MW) radiation.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have launched a phase Ib clinical trial to assess the safety and tolerability of cirmtuzumab, in combination with standard chemotherapy, to treat metastatic or locally advanced breast cancer that cannot be surgically removed.

• share
• favorite_border

To better understand how much marijuana or constituent compounds actually get into breast milk and how long it remains, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine conducted a study, publishing online August 27 in Pediatrics.

• share
• favorite_border

In a paper published this week in the journal PNAS, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues in Spain and Finland, describe for the first time how one type of RNA polymerase gets stalled by DNA lesions caused by exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light.

• share
• favorite_border

Christopher Kane, MD, has been appointed dean of clinical affairs for UC San Diego School of Medicine and CEO of UC San Diego Health Physicians, effective July 15. In these dual roles, Kane will collaborate with UC San Diego leadership to ensure that UC San Diego Health Physicians achieve the highest standards of service, access, quality, safety, and patient satisfaction and are integrated to support the unique and growing needs of an expanding academic health system and its growing regional network of providers.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine (UAB) have received renewed grant funding from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to expand research into the areas of acute kidney failure and acute kidney injuries.

• share
• favorite_border

In a pair of new modeling studies, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with international colleagues, examined how policy reform in terms of drug decriminalization (in Mexico) and access to drug treatment (in Russia) might affect two regions hard hit by the HIV pandemic: Tijuana, Mexico and the Russian cities of Omsk and Ekaterinburg.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine report that women whose mothers lived to at least age 90 were more likely to also live to 90, free of serious diseases and disabilities.

• share
• favorite_border

UC San Diego Health and its medical and surgical specialties have again been nationally ranked by U.S. News & World Report for 2018-19.

• share
• favorite_border

To understand why some patients with appendix cancer respond to standard treatment while others do not, University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center researchers, in collaboration with Foundation Medicine, performed genetic profiling on 703 appendiceal tumors — the largest such study of this disease to date — to compare mutations present in both cancer types.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine report that they have successfully created spinal cord neural stem cells (NSCs) from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) that differentiate into a diverse population of cells capable of dispersing throughout the spinal cord and can be maintained for long periods of time.

• share
• favorite_border

For the first time, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Imperial College London, with international collaborators, have determined that Kawasaki Disease (KD) can be accurately diagnosed on the basis of the pattern of host gene expression in whole blood. The finding could lead to a diagnostic blood test to distinguish KD from other infectious and inflammatory conditions.

• share
• favorite_border