Health And Medicine

Laboratory and administrative personnel at Vanderbilt University Medical Center were honored last week for research excellence during the 17th annual Research Staff Awards, held virtually this year because of the pandemic. Read More

Valeria Reyes Ruiz, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, has been selected as a 2020 Hanna Gray Fellow by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Read More

Delirium, a form of acute brain dysfunction, is widespread in critically ill patients in lower resourced hospitals, and the duration of delirium predicted both mortality and disability at six months after discharge, according to a study published in PLOS ONE. Read More

Wei-Qi Wei, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics and scientific director of the Precision Phenotyping Core at the Center for Precision Medicine, has been awarded a four-year, $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue development of high-throughput software for quickly identifying traits of interest, or phenotypes, in electronic health records (EHRs). Read More

Retrieval of clearer, more complete information from the EHR could go a long way toward improving predictive models of who will next be at risk of suicide, thereby improving care for patients with suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Read More

A noninvasive, quantitative MRI method could be used after surgical repair of traumatic peripheral nerve injury to help clinicians make decisions about whether additional surgical interventions are needed. Read More

HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS, exploits inositol phosphates in T cells to aid its own assembly and maturation — suggesting that targeting inositol phosphate binding could inhibit HIV-1 replication. Read More

Insight into the pathophysiology of an enigmatic and debilitating disease suggests new treatment approaches. Read More

A selenium transport protein produced in the colon may be a novel biomarker for assessing disease severity and cancer risk in patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Read More

A new method speeds the analysis of factors that control gene expression from days to minutes, allowing researchers to uncover new targets for cancer treatment. Read More

Sedative medications used in intensive care are associated with increased delirium, which is in turn connected with higher medical costs and greater risk of death and ICU-related dementia. Read More

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston have discovered what may be the Achilles’ heel of the coronavirus, a finding that may help close the door on COVID-19 and possibly head off future pandemics. Read More

Scientists are just beginning to understand the impact of diet on the gut microbiome and how this interaction affects human health, but baselines must first be established to yield answers. Read More

A rare tumor that causes facial weakness was found masquerading as a more common benign facial tumor. Read More

A blood stem cell protein plays a role in the initiation and progression of leukemia, Vanderbilt researchers have found. Read More

Brain inflammation links genetic and acquired epilepsy — providing new clues about epilepsy development and pointing to potential treatments. Read More

William Tansey and colleagues identified proteins that interact with the cancer drug target WDR5 and are important for cancer cell growth. Read More

Oxidative stress and toxic products called isolevuglandins in mitochondria play a role in endothelial dysfunction and hypertension — and getting rid of them with a special “scavenger” molecule has therapeutic potential. Read More

Small RNAs — short stretches of genetic material — from microbes may be playing a role in rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. Read More

Vitamin D protection against colon cancer varies according to parathyroid hormone response, particularly among women. Read More