Health And Medicine

An immune system factor associated with severe asthma may actually reduce asthma attacks induced by viral infections. Read More

Tucked in a data center in the basement of Vanderbilt University Hospital, a new computer the size of a large armoire, called a data warehouse appliance, is delivering a new order of speed to Vanderbilt clinical scientists as they search, filter, analyze and annotate the de-identified medical records of approximately 2 million patients. Read More

Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute is participating in a clinical study to further evaluate the safety and feasibility of rapidly lowering the body’s temperature to significantly reduce the amount of damage caused by a heart attack. Read More

Dietary variety – not high-fat or sugary foods – appears to stimulate overeating in a mouse model of an inherited obesity syndrome. Read More

Health disparities between white and black adults in the South are not connected to a lack of exercise but more likely related to other factors such as access to health care, socioeconomic status and perhaps genetics, according to a Vanderbilt study published in PLoS ONE. Read More

An international team of scientists, including six from Vanderbilt University, has identified the first unique genetic determinants of body mass index (BMI) in people of African ancestry. Read More

A gene associated with cell survival and longevity may protect the kidney from acute injury. Read More

Dysfunction of the endothelial cells that line blood vessels may contribute to delirium and coma in critically ill patients – and could be a target for therapy. Read More

Targeting repair pathways in the lung’s air sacs may be a valuable therapeutic direction for pulmonary fibrosis – the scarring of lung tissue. Read More

Overexpression of a gene that is a common culprit in leukemia induces stem cell-like features in T cells, which may enable the cells to become cancerous. Read More

The future of cancer is becoming clearer. And it’s not looking so good for cancer. Read More

Research in the last two years to examine the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine has raised public doubt about the flu shot's effectiveness. But two Vanderbilt researchers co-wrote an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently to help balance the current debate. Read More

Carlos Arteaga, M.D., professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt, has been elected president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research for 2013-2014. Read More

Immune cells that recognize self antigens (e.g. insulin), but are functionally silent, can trigger autoimmune diseases such as diabetes. Read More

The gene Has2 participates in signaling that is important in developing fingers and toes, and may have relevance for cancer development. Read More

Berberine, an herbal remedy for diarrhea and intestinal parasites, may be useful in colon cancer therapy. Read More

Katherine Hutchinson, a third-year graduate student in Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt University, has won a $10,000 Research Scholar Award from the Joanna M. Nicolay Melanoma Foundation. Read More

In critically ill patients with sepsis, plasma hemoglobin may be a new indicator of disease severity – and a potential target for treatment with acetaminophen. Read More

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have discovered a new “push-pull” mechanism in the brain that one day could lead to new treatments for movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, as well as stress-related disorders and addiction. Read More

Many patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) have recurrence of their disease after an initial response to chemotherapy because the cancer cells have become resistant to treatment. TNBC has a lower survival rate because of this pattern of resistance and there are no targeted agents to treat this form of breast cancer. Read More