Health And Medicine

Student-run free health clinics, a hallmark of most medical schools across the country, not only provide valuable clinical experience for the students who volunteer there, but may actually reduce hospital utilization by the patients in their care, according to a Vanderbilt study recently published in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. Read More

A research-dedicated PET/CT scanner installed recently in the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science (VUIIS) will expand opportunities for Vanderbilt researchers to conduct studies of a wide range of disorders, from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease. Read More

Although HPV vaccination in adolescence can successfully prevent six kinds of cancer, rates in Tennessee remain relatively low, while occurrence of these cancers remains relatively high compared to the rest of the country.  Pamela Hull, assistant professor of medicine, and her colleagues are conducting a study funded by the HPV ACTIVE TIPs award, in collaboration with the Cumberland Pediatric Foundation, to test a model for disseminating a web-based quality improvement coaching program to pediatric clinics. Read More

New research from Vanderbilt suggests that repeated seizures reduce brainstem connectivity, a possible contributor to unexplained neurocognitive problems in epilepsy patients. Read More

Thirty years ago when she was 16, Katie Niemeyer was prescribed carbamazepine for depression. Three weeks later she was in a St. Louis, Missouri, burn unit with second and third degree burns all over her body. “My parents were told the chances of me surviving were slim,” she said. Read More

Just because you stopped smoking years ago doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods when it comes to developing lung cancer.  That’s the “bad” news. The good news is your risk of lung cancer drops substantially within five years of quitting. Read More

A team of investigators led by Fabien Maldonado, MD, associate professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt, and Tobias Peikert, MD, assistant professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, has identified a new technology to address false positives in CT-based lung cancer screening. The study was published in the latest issue of PLOS One. Read More

Genomic sequences have revealed that Florida is a major source of a mosquito-borne virus that causes disease in horses and humans. Read More

A new Vanderbilt study suggests it may be possible to develop antibody therapies or a universal vaccine effective against multiple Ebola virus family members. Read More

Using techniques to control and monitor the activities of individual neurons, Vanderbilt investigators are probing the brain’s reward circuitry. Read More

Targeting the protein that mosquito-borne viruses use to enter cells could be a strategy for preventing infection by multiple emerging viruses. Read More

The number of school-age children and adolescents hospitalized for suicidal thoughts or attempts has more than doubled since 2008, according to a new Vanderbilt-led study published in Pediatrics. Read More

Infants who are diagnosed with drug withdrawal after birth who are treated with medication as outpatients at home are treated three times longer than infants treated solely as inpatients, according to a new Vanderbilt study. Read More

Right under your nose but unseen by the human eye is the microbiome—the totality of microbes in an environment. The Vanderbilt Microbiome Initiative, funded by a TIPs grant, is coordinating basic, translational and clinical scholarship to help unlock the mysteries of these bacteria, viruses and more. Learn about the initiative and its new website in this VU BreakThru blog post. Read more about TIPs grants and other internal faculty funding programs—including University Courses, Research Scholar Grants and Discovery Grants—at the VU BreakThru blog. Read More

Children who underwent cardiac surgery were less likely to develop acute kidney injury if they had been treated with acetaminophen in the first 48 hours after their procedures, according to a Vanderbilt study just published in JAMA Pediatrics. Read More

W. Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, Cornelius Abernathy Craig Professor of Medicine and director of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), has received a grant to research the role of immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment for kidney cancer. Read More

Generic drug options did not reduce prices paid for the cancer therapy imatinib (Gleevec), according to a Health Affairs study released this week. Read More

An enzyme called PTEN reduces inflammatory signaling and mortality in sepsis, suggesting it may be a good therapeutic target for this life-threatening complication of infection. Read More

Patients who take a cholesterol-lowering statin drug while taking the antibiotic daptomycin have increased risk of developing muscle weakness or a more severe form of muscle damage. Read More

A special genetic analysis has revealed candidate genes associated with increased risk of breast cancer. Read More