The Power to Tell Your Story

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of Chicago Hospitals are unlocking the mysteries of human heart disease with transgenic mice and a powerful new cardiovascular ultrasound imaging machine from Hewlett-Packard Company. The result of their efforts using mice could mean improved pharmaceutical treatments, prevention regimens, and possible genetic cures for the millions of humans suffering from heart disease worldwide.

• share
• favorite_border

A multi-institutional team has taken a crucial step toward understanding and treating Rett syndrome, a rare and often-misdiagnosed neurodevelopmental disorder that affects 1 in 10,000 children, mostly females.

• share
• favorite_border

Five percent of deaths from SIDS in African Americans can be traced to defects in one gene. Half of those deaths result from a common variation that increases an infant's risk of developing an abnormal heart rhythm during times of environmental stress.

• share
• favorite_border

There is no difference between an over-the-counter decongestant and a prescription medication that costs almost four times as much in relieving hay fever symptoms. Daily doses of 240 mg of pseudoephedrine were just as effective as 10 mg daily of montelukast at relieving symptoms without additional side effects.

• share
• favorite_border

Although their genes are virtually identical, humans and chimpanzees differ substantially. This study provides powerful new evidence for a 30-year-old theory, that the differences are due more to changes in gene regulation than differences in individual genes.

• share
• favorite_border

The Jack Miller Center for Peripheral Neuropathy at the University of Chicago will present its second biennial scientific symposium on the "Frontiers of Peripheral Nerve Research," from 9 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. on Friday, April 28, 2006.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have been able to confirm most but not all of the results of a high-profile study that brought new hope to diabetes patients. This study provides a boost for efforts to reverse type-1 diabetes in recently diagnosed patients but not for efforts to grow new islets from spleens.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Chicago physicians propose the first general framework for withholding or discontinuing medications, adding life expectancy, goals of care, treatment targets and time until benefit to the usual equation of drug plusses and minuses.

• share
• favorite_border

Linguists have argued that certain patterns of language organization are the exclusive province of humans. These syntactical capacities have been used to define the boundaries between humans and other creatures. Now researchers have discovered the capacity to recognize such patterns in starlings.

• share
• favorite_border

Although 45 percent of physicians do not inquire about religious belief, 55 percent do; 10 percent of them do so "always." While 81 percent rarely or never pray with patients, 19 percent do. A survey of physicians' religious characteristics found no consensus about what is appropriate, suggesting that physicians will "need to grapple" with these deeply rooted differences.

• share
• favorite_border

A new way to preserve the cells that surround and protect nerves could lead to new treatments for demyelinating diseases such a multiple sclerosis.

• share
• favorite_border

The first long-term study shows that treatment with pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine during the first year of life leads to a lasting reduction in brain and eye damage for children born with toxoplasmosis. These findings renew the appeal for screening and early treatment for this infection in pregnant women and newborns.

• share
• favorite_border

The first study to assess the benefits of naps for medical residents during extended shifts found that although sleep time increased by only about one hour, interns felt that even small gains in sleep led to substantial improvements in fatigue, sleep quality and ability to care for patients.

• share
• favorite_border

A multi-institutional team of researchers has found that people with long-standing, severe paralysis can generate signals in the area of the brain responsible for voluntary movement and these signals can be detected, recorded, routed out of the brain to a computer and converted into actions -- enabling a paralyzed patient to perform basic tasks.

• share
• favorite_border

Short or poor quality sleep is associated with reduced control of blood-sugar levels in people with diabetes, report researchers from the University of Chicago. One inexpensive way to improve the health of patients with type 2 diabetes might be to improve their sleep.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers report that a newer operation, the duodenal switch, produced substantially better weight loss in super-obese patients (BMI greater than 50) than gastric bypass, the standard operation. Three years after surgery, 84% of duodenal switch patients had lost more than half of their excess weight, compared to 60% of those treated with gastric bypass.

• share
• favorite_border

Adding the opiate blocker naltrexone to the combination of behavioral therapy and nicotine patches boosted smoking cessation rates for women by almost 50 percent when assessed after 8 weeks of treatment, but made no difference for men. Naltrexone helped reduce the craving and lessened the discomforts of withdrawal for women. It also reduced weight gain.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have deciphered the 3D structure of insulin-degrading enzyme, a promising target for new drugs because it breaks down not only insulin but also the amyloid-beta protein, which has been linked to the cognitive decline of Alzheimer's disease. The finding is exciting because it suggests ways to speed up this ubiquitous enzyme's activity by as much as 40-fold.

• share
• favorite_border

Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) who take medications as directed incur 12.5 percent lower medical costs than those who do not report University of Chicago researchers. A second study, however, suggests that there is no simple way to improve compliance.

• share
• favorite_border

The MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago will host its 18th annual conference on Fri. and Sat., Nov. 10-11, 2006, on the chances of meaningful health care reform and the ethical challenges faced by caregivers and patients.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and the University of Chicago have uncovered a remarkably well-preserved fossil lamprey from the Devonian period that reveals today's lampreys as "living fossils" since they have remained largely unaltered for 360 million years.

• share
• favorite_border

By combining the four bacterial surface proteins that generate the strongest immune response in mice, researchers at the University of Chicago have created a vaccine that significantly protects immunized animals from multiple disease-causing, drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, the most common cause of hospital-acquired infections and a rapidly spreading source of community-associated illness.

• share
• favorite_border

A drug used to treat kidney cancer can prevent the development of pulmonary hypertension in rodents. There is no curative therapy for this condition.

• share
• favorite_border

In this week's issue of Science, researchers suggest an early human-Neanderthal split. The two species have a common ancestry, say the authors, but do not share much else after evolving their separate ways. The study also finds no evidence of genetic admixture between Neanderthals and humans.

• share
• favorite_border

Even after successful treatment for colon cancer, the very obese are about one-third more likely to have their cancer recur and to die prematurely from cancer than those of normal weight. The very thin were also at increased risk of death.

• share
• favorite_border

Despite the explosive growth in size and complexity of the human brain, the pace of evolutionary change among the thousands of genes expressed in brain tissue has actually slowed since the split, millions of years ago, between human and chimpanzee.

• share
• favorite_border

By starting treatment for high blood pressure earlier and being more aggressive, physicians in the U.S. control hypertension significantly better than their counterparts in western Europe. Sixty-three percent of U.S. patients had their blood pressure under control "“ compared to 31 percent to 46 percent in Italy, the UK, Germany, Spain or France.

• share
• favorite_border

Many physicians feel no obligation to tell patients about legal but morally controversial medical treatments or to refer patients to doctors who do not object to those treatments. While 86% felt obliged to present all options, only 71% said they felt obligated to refer the patient to a doctor who did not object to the requested procedure, and 63% believed it is permissible for doctors to describe their objections to the patient.

• share
• favorite_border

About 5,000 tiny differences play a key role in the evolutionary divergence between the human and chimpanzee genomes. Before a new mutation can take its place in the human genome it has to pass through a rigorous two-step screening process. In step one, more radical changes are often removed. In step two, the radical mutations spread.

• share
• favorite_border

Although three out of four primary care doctors support the use of financial rewards as an incentive for better medical care, most of them oppose public reporting of such quality assessments. Physicians surveyed for this study worry that current quality measures are not sufficiently accurate and that pay-for-performance and public-reporting programs could cause doctors to shun sick, poor or non-compliant patients.

• share
• favorite_border

A Chicago-area study of 50 individuals with a misaligned Atlas vertebra (located high in the neck) and high blood pressure showed that after a one-time specialized chiropractic adjustment, blood pressure decreased significantly.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of Chicago have found an unsuspected link between the immune system and high plasma lipid levels (cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood) in mice. The finding could lead to new ways to reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering elevated lipid levels.

• share
• favorite_border

Common practice in the treatment of adolescent eating disorder patients has been to exclude the parents. Many experts consider parents part of the problem and thus keep them away during therapy. Two U.S."“based clinicians disagree and have written a "how to" book published in February that includes family in the treatment of these patients. They say parents are well poised to help their children overcome bulimia.

• share
• favorite_border

The largest study to date of genetic variation among chimpanzees has found that the traditional, geography-based sorting of chimps into three populations"”western, central and eastern"”is underpinned by significant genetic differences, two to three times greater than the variation between the most different human populations. This has important implications for conservation.

• share
• favorite_border

According to one of the first studies to examine the clinical and economic impact of quality improvement on diabetes care, a small investment in upgrading the delivery of such care for patients at federally qualified community health centers brought about a substantial improvement in health that justified the costs of the program.

• share
• favorite_border

Long before animals with limbs came onto the scene about 365 million years ago, fish already possessed the genes associated with helping to grow hands and feet report University of Chicago researchers in the May 24, 2007 issue of Nature.

• share
• favorite_border

Many African-American men radically underestimate the likelihood that having a needle biopsy for suspected prostate cancer will result in a cancer diagnosis, according to a study from the University of Chicago Medical Center.

• share
• favorite_border

Standards to measure narrowing of the carotid artery using ultrasound may be too aggressive, resulting in some needless follow-up tests and procedures according to a University of Chicago Medical Center study.

• share
• favorite_border

Levels of a small non-coding RNA molecule appear to define different stages of cancer better than some of the "classical" markers for tumor progression. By suppressing genes that are active in the developing embryo, the let-7 family of microRNAs appears to prevent human cancer cells from reasserting their prenatal capacity to divide rapidly, travel and spread.

• share
• favorite_border

Exploiting interactions between food and drugs could dramatically lower the costs of some anti-cancer drugs--and many other medications. Certain foods aid absorption or delay breakdown of these drugs. Two cancer-pharmacology specialists suggest the "Value Meal," a novel way to decrease costs and increase benefits from these effective but expensive drugs.

• share
• favorite_border

A genetically engineered herpes simplex virus, primarily known for causing cold sores, may help keep arteries "free-flowing" in the weeks following angioplasty or stent placement for patients, according to research published early in the online edition of PNAS.

• share
• favorite_border

Long-term female survivors of genital-tract cancer were pleased with their cancer care but not with the emotional support and information they received about the effects of the disease and treatment on their sexuality. Three out of 5 said their physicians never brought up the effects on sexuality. Women who did report such a conversation were much less likely to have "complex sexual problems" at the time of the survey.

• share
• favorite_border

Although most religious traditions call on the faithful to serve the poor, a large cross-sectional survey of U.S. physicians found that physicians who are more religious are slightly less likely to practice medicine among the underserved than physicians with no religious affiliation.

• share
• favorite_border

A 400 million-year-old fossil of a coelacanth fin, the first finding of its kind, fills a shrinking evolutionary gap between fins and limbs. University of Chicago scientists describe the finding in a paper highlighted on the cover of the July/August 2007 issue of Evolution & Development.

• share
• favorite_border

A poorly understood and previously unsuspected mechanism may be the key to understanding how life-style associated forms of oxidative stress, such as exposure to cigarette smoke, damage cells in the lungs.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers discovered that rats most likely to self-administer addictive drugs had a receptor in the brain that is more responsive than the same receptor in rats least likely to self-administer addictive drugs. Known as the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR), it increases excitability within in the brain's reward centers.

• share
• favorite_border

The first comprehensive national survey of sexual attitudes, behaviors and problems among older adults in the United States has found that most people ages 57 to 85 think of sexuality as an important part of life, that many men and women remain sexually active well into their 70s and 80s, and that sexual activity was closely tied to overall health, which was even more important than age.

• share
• favorite_border

In the first randomized controlled trial for adolescent bulimia nervosa to be completed in the US, researchers show that mobilizing parents to help an adolescent overcome the disorder can double the percentage of teens who were able to abstain from binge eating and purging after six months.

• share
• favorite_border

A survey of the religious beliefs and practices of American physicians has found that the least religious of all medical specialties is psychiatry. The study also found that religious physicians, especially Protestants, are less likely to refer patients to psychiatrists, and more likely to send them to members of the clergy or religious counselors.

• share
• favorite_border

Insulin gene mutations can cause permanent neonatal diabetes. This is the first time that an insulin mutation has been connected to severe early onset diabetes. These mutations alter the way insulin folds. Misfolded insulin may interfere with cellular processes in ways that kill cells that produce insulin. The finding suggests new approaches to treatment.