Category Archives: Health

Raising Computers to Be Good Scientists

A team of UA researchers is sifting through thousands of research papers to improve treatment for cancer patients, one algorithm at a time.

Making sense of the new scientific data published every year — including well over a million cancer-related journal articles — is a tall order for the contemporary scientist. (more…)

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Why Elephants Rarely Get Cancer

A Potential Mechanism Identified That May Be Key to Cancer Resistance

SALT LAKE CITY—Why elephants rarely get cancer is a mystery that has stumped scientists for decades. A study led by researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah and Arizona State University, and including researchers from the Ringling Bros. Center for Elephant Conservation, may have found the answer. (more…)

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Drug engineered from bananas shows promise in fighting deadly viruses

ANN ARBOR—A banana a day may not keep the doctor away, but a substance originally found in bananas and carefully edited by scientists could someday fight off a wide range of viruses, new research suggests. (more…)

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Study counters long-time practice of prescribing more fertility hormones

A Michigan State University study has found that too much of a hormone commonly used during in vitro fertility, or IVF, treatments actually decreases a woman’s chances of having a baby. (more…)

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Lowering nicotine loosens tobacco’s hold

A team of researchers, including two at Brown University, show that when people smoked cigarettes with less nicotine, they smoked less, felt less craving, and tried to quit more. Results appear in The New England Journal of Medicine.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Two Brown University researchers are co-authors of a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that nicotine content is a significant determinant of cigarette use and dependence. (more…)

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Brain Parasite Not Your Typical Invader

UA researcher Anita Koshy has received two grants to study how Toxoplasma infection affects the brain’s immune response, and also how it manipulates the neurons with which the parasite interacts.

For most people, the idea that their brain may be infected with a microscopic parasite isn’t exactly cause for celebration. (more…)

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A doctor’s love affair with medicine and literature

For Anna Reisman, M.D., it was a summer novel that pointed her to a career in medicine. 

As a rising Yale senior and English major with no thought of becoming a doctor, she read Thomas Mann’s classic 1924 novelThe Magic Mountain, a tale of tuberculosis patients at a Swiss sanatorium. Surprised by her own fascination with the disease, she went on to read physician-writers Oliver Sacks, M.D., Richard Selzer, M.D., HS ’61, and Lewis Thomas, M.D. Soon she was a medical student at New York University. (more…)

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