The drug topiramate, typically used to treat epilepsy and more recently weight loss, may also help people addicted to both cocaine and alcohol use less cocaine, particularly heavy users, researchers in the department of Psychiatry at Penn Medicine report in a new study published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
In an editorial accompanying the new results of a trial of Radium-223 in the New England Journal of Medicine, Neha Vapiwala, MD, an associate professor and chief of the Genitourinary service in the department of Radiation Oncology in the Perelman School of Medicine and Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, revisits the discovery of radium by Madame Marie Curie more than 115 years ago and traces its path to modern-day cancer care.
The protein TAp73 is a relative of the well-known, tumor-suppressor protein p53, yet it is still not known whether TAp73 enhances tumor cell growth and, if so, exactly how. Penn researchers found that TAp73 supports the proliferation of human and mouse tumor cells. They also identify an important mechanism by which TAp73 gives tumor cells a growth advantage: it activates the expression of an enzyme important for cell replications and anti-oxidant protection.
The trajectory of amyloid plaque buildup—clumps of abnormal proteins in the brain linked to Alzheimer’s disease—may serve as a more powerful biomarker for early detection of cognitive decline rather than using the total amount to gauge risk, researchers from Penn Medicine’s Department of Radiology suggest in a new study published online July 15 in Neurobiology of Aging.
Utilizing crowdsourcing in medical research can improve the quality, cost, and speed of a research project while engaging large segments of the public and creating novel science.
Researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that, across a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, cerebrovascular disease affecting circulation of blood in the brain was significantly associated with dementia.
Patients with low socioeconomic status use emergency and hospital care more often than primary care because they believe hospital care is more affordable and convenient, and of better quality than care provided by primary care physicians, according to the results of a new study from researchers at Penn Medicine. The results of the study, appearing in the July issue of Health Affairs, have significant implications for policy initiatives such as the Affordable Care Act that seek to lower health care costs by reducing avoidable hospitalizations, readmissions, and emergency department visits.
In a New England Journal of Medicine “Perspective” article, Saurabh Jha, MB, BS, of the department of Radiology at in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses an important role for radiologists as changes in the US health care system come about: gatekeepers of medical imaging.
Researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have shown one disease protein can morph into different strains and promote misfolding of other disease proteins commonly found in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other related neurodegenerative diseases.
New research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found military service members who have trouble sleeping prior to deployments may be at greater risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety once they return home. The study found that pre-existing insomnia symptoms conferred almost as a large of a risk for those mental disorders as combat exposure.
In the June 25 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, Scott Halpern, MD, PhD, MBE, medical ethicist and assistant professor of ≈, Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care, at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the implications of judicial activism in organ donation and suggests several ways to improve the availability and allocation of transplantable organs.
Earlier this month, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and the National Kidney Registry, in partnership with 18 transplant centers across the country, successfully completed the second largest kidney exchange in history and the largest to be concluded in under 40 days. Dubbed Chain 221, the swap involved 56 participants (28 donors and 28 recipients). Four patients at Penn Medicine, including two long-lost grade-school friends, participated in the chain – two receiving new, healthy kidneys, and two donating their own kidneys to other recipients in the chain. Of the participating centers, Penn Medicine was the only one in the tri-state region.
Therapeutic hypothermia is rarely being used in patients who suffer cardiac arrest while in the hospital, despite its proven potential to improve survival and neurological function, researchers from Penn Medicine report in the June issue of Critical Care Medicine. The findings have implications for the lives of 210,000 patients in U.S. who arrest during hospitalizations each year.
Pancreatic cancer carries a dismal prognosis. Researchers and clinicians don’t have a non-invasive way to even detect early cells that portent later disease. Scientists have created a research cell line from a patient with advanced pancreatic cancer. This first-of-its-kind human-cell model of pancreatic cancer progression is the first example using induced pluripotent stem cells to model cancer progression directly from a solid tumor and to model pancreatic cancer from early to invasive stages.
The motor neuron disease Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, progresses in a stepwise, sequential pattern which can be classified into four distinct stages, report pathologists with the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in the Annals of Neurology.
Precisely what causes breast cancer recurrence has been poorly understood. But now a piece of the puzzle has fallen into place: Researchers have identified a key molecular player in recurrent breast cancer – a finding that suggests potential new therapeutic strategies.
Stress felt by dad—whether as a preadolescent or adult—leaves a lasting impression on his sperm that gives sons and daughters a blunted reaction to stress, according to a new preclinical study in the Journal of Neuroscience by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. The findings point to a never-before-seen epigenetic link to stress-related diseases such as anxiety and depression passed from father to child.
Penn Medicine gastroenterologist William H. Lipshutz, MD, has been named the 2013 recipient of the Outstanding Volunteer Clinical Teacher Award by the American College of Physicians.
The Greenwall Foundation has named Penn Medicine’s Peter Reese, MD, MSCE, a leading voice for improving organ donor rates and access to transplant, as a 2013 Greenwall Faculty Scholar in Bioethics.
Certain high-activity careers lead to both lower and higher sleep duration, potentially creating or exacerbating health problems.
Eighty-three percent of cancer doctors report that they’ve faced oncology drug shortages, and of those, nearly all say that their patients’ treatment has been impacted, according to a study from researchers at the Abramson Cancer Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania that will be presented today at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Abstract #CRA6510). The results showed that shortages – which have hit especially hard among drugs to treat pediatric, gastrointestinal and blood cancers – have left physicians surveyed unable to prescribe standard chemotherapies for a range of cancers.
Researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have determined the role of a key growth factor, found in limited quantities in human skin cells, that helps hair follicles form and regenerate during the wound healing process. When this growth factor, called Fgf9, was overexpressed in a mouse model, there was a two- to three-fold increase in the number of new hair follicles produced. Researchers believe that this growth factor could be used therapeutically for people with various hair and scalp disorders. The study appears in an advance online publication of Nature Medicine.
The kidney and liver cancer drug sorafenib holds metastatic thyroid cancer at bay for nearly twice as long as a placebo, according to results of a randomized phase III trial, which will be presented today by a researcher from the Abramson Cancer Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in a plenary session during the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting (Abstract #4).
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania clinicians and researchers will be presenting compelling data and giving talks about emerging issues in the field of sleep medicine during SLEEP 2013, in Baltimore, MD, June 2 – 5, 2013.
Advances in care, increased focus on LGBT health may explain shift from previous findings.
Researchers have developed a new gene therapy to thwart a potential influenza pandemic. They demonstrated that a single dose of an adeno-associated virus expressing a broadly neutralizing flu antibody into the noses of animal models gives them complete protection and substantial reductions in flu replication when exposed to lethal strains of H5N1 and H1N1 flu virus. These were isolated from samples associated from historic human pandemics – the infamous 1918 flu pandemic and another from 2009.
Frank T. Leone, MD, MS, associate professor of Medicine and director of the Comprehensive Smoking Treatment Program at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named the 2013 “Practitioner of the Year” by the Philadelphia County Medical Society (PCMS).
The human gut is loaded with helpful bacteria microbes, yet the immune system seemingly turns a blind eye. Now, researchers know how this friendly truce is kept intact. Innate lymphoid cells directly limit the response by inflammatory T cells to commensal bacteria in the gut of mice. Loss of this ILC function effectively puts the immune system on an extended war footing against the commensal bacteria a condition observed in multiple chronic inflammatory diseases.
The decision to limit life support in patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) appears to be significantly influenced by physician practices and/or the culture of the hospital, suggests new findings from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference on May 21.
Having a nighttime intensivist had no clear benefit on length of stay or mortality for critical care patients, not even patients admitted at night or those with the most critical illnesses at the time of admission, according to new findings from Penn Medicine researchers published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Procedure traditionally used during heart surgery and in the ICU may show promise as a rescue strategy for select cardiac arrest patients.
In the largest clinical trial to date to examine the efficacy of PARP inhibitor therapy in BRCA 1/2 carriers with diseases other than breast and ovarian cancer, the oral drug olaparib was found to be effective against advanced pancreatic and prostate cancers. Results of the study, led by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Israel, will be presented during the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago in early June (Abstract #11024).
The majority of cancer doctors, patients, and members of the general public support cutting health care costs by refusing to pay for drugs that don’t improve survival or quality of life, according to results of a new study that will be presented by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania during the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago in early June (Abstract #6518).
Eve J. Higginbotham, SM, MD, has been named the first Vice Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, effective August 1, 2013.
First Map of Its Kind Reveals Key Areas for Additional Research and Support Services
Innate lymphoid cells protect boundary tissues such as the skin, lung, and the gut from microbial onslaught. They also have shown they play a role in inflammatory disease. Researchers have found that maturation of ILC2s requires T-cell factor 1 to move forward. They describe in Immunity that one mechanism used to build ILCs is the same as that in T cells. Both cell types use a protein pathway centered on Notch.
A new study in Nature Genetics looking at the genomes of more than 13,000 men identified four new genetic variants associated with an increased risk of testicular cancer, the most commonly diagnosed type in young men today.
Total anomalous pulmonary venous connection, one type of “blue baby” syndrome, is a potentially deadly congenital disorder that occurs when pulmonary veins don’t connect normally to the left atrium of the heart. TAPVC babies are born cyanotic from lack of oxygen. Semaphorin 3d guides the development of endothelial cells and is crucial for normal development of pulmonary veins. Mutations in Sema3d cause embryonic blood vessels to hook up in the wrong way.
Two-thirds of U.S. hospitals have policies aimed at reducing neonatal complications.
Brian L. Strom, MD, MPH, the executive vice dean for Institutional Affairs in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, was recently presented with a National Award for Career Achievement and Contribution to Clinical and Translational Science at the Translational Science 2013 meeting in Washington, D.C.
Over the years, evidence-based therapies, like prolonged exposure therapy, have been shown to successfully ameliorate PTSD severity in patients. The trouble is, the majority of these patients haven’t been getting them, researchers report in Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
With a better understanding of underlying mechanisms that cause a rare neurodevelopmental disorder in the Old Order Mennonite population, referred to as Pretzel syndrome, a new study reports that five children were successfully treated with a drug that modifies the disease process, minimizing seizures and improving receptive language. The study, by researchers including experts from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, appears in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) in a precise region of the brain appears to reduce caloric intake and prompt weight loss in obese animal models, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.
Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of the Pennsylvania have shown that an area of the brain that initiates behavioral changes had greater activation in smokers who watched anti-smoking ads with strong arguments versus those with weaker ones, and irrespective of flashy elements, like bright and rapidly changing scenes, loud sounds and unexpected scenario twists. Those smokers also had significantly less nicotine metabolites in their urine when tested a month after viewing those ads, the team reports in a new study published online April 23 in the Journal of Neuroscience.
A gene therapy study focused on finding a cure for a rare congenital blinding disease has been recognized as one of the ten most outstanding clinical research projects of the year by the Clinical Research Forum (CRF). The study, led by Jean Bennett, MD, Phd, F.M. Kirby professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and carried out in collaboration with Penn Medicine’s Albert M. Maguire, MD, and Katherine A. High, MD at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), has been presented with the Distinguished Clinical Research Achievement Award, the second highest given in the CRF’s Annual Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Awards. CRF award winners are cited as the most compelling examples of scientific innovation that results from the nation’s investment in clinical research that can benefit human health and welfare.
Garret FitzGerald MD, FRS, chairman of the Pharmacology Department and director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, has been awarded the 2013 Grand Prix Scientifique by the Institut de France.
Late stage thyroid cancer patients with aggressive disease may benefit from a genetic test, but experts caution that use of this test in early stage patients is inappropriate because it is unlikely to lead to better outcomes, according to an accompanying editorial in JAMA co-authored by two Perelman School of Medicine researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.
Only 53 percent of newly diagnosed breast cancer patients who were at high risk of carrying a BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 mutation – based on age, diagnosis, and family history of breast or ovarian cancer – reported that their doctors urged them to be tested for the genes, according to a research team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
A team led by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania will present findings (Presentation #1679A) during the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2013 outlining a potential new strategy for detecting which cancer patients may respond to therapies involving autophagy inhibitors.
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