Past News

Why are bed bugs on the rise in cities like Philadelphia, and what dangers do they pose? Michael Z. Levy, PhD, comments as part of this live radio show.

For years, we have questioned whether risks are higher for patients whose blood pressure seems to spike only at the doctor's office. A new study led by Jordana Cohen, MD, MSCE, says the answer is emphatically yes.

For nearly 20 years, eGFR equations have helped clinicians screen for kidney disease and care for patients. But the problems of racial classification related to eGFR have not been closely examined, write authors Nwamaka D. Eneanya, MD, MPH; Wei (Peter) Yang, PhD; and Peter P. Reese, MD, MSCE.

“If you have a proactive legislation that incentivizes landlords and everyone to treat for bed bugs promptly, you can really decrease the number of bed bugs quickly,” Michael Z. Levy, PhD, commented about a study he worked on with lead author Sherrie Xie, a graduate researcher in epidemiology.

Karen Glanz, Phd, MPH, and Holly Fernandez Lynch, JD, MBE, argue that the research ethics community must act responsibly when it comes to deceptive experiments like the 1960s study featured in the film Three Identical Strangers.

M. Kit Delgado, MD, MSCE, is studying how to “gamify”—or create incentives for—safety steps, so that it becomes “a much more engaging experience and more fun” to stay off the phone while driving.

Black and Hispanic Americans quit smoking successfully only half as often as their white counterparts. The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute has awarded $11 million for researchers led by Scott Halpern, MD, PhD, M.Bioethics, to find out what could help.

A rule change significantly reduces concussions from kickoffs, an especially dangerous play, in college football, reported Douglas Wiebe, PhD, and colleagues recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The positive results in the Ivy League athletic conference show how a public-health intervention can emerge from collaboration among injury epidemiologists, coaches and athletic trainers, commented Dr. Wiebe.

In a continuation of their trailblazing work, Peter Reese, MD, MSCE, and David Goldberg, MD, MSCE, report more encouraging results for patients who need transplants. A total of 20 have now successfully received hepatitis C positive kidneys plus antiviral therapy.

New research led by Vincent Lo Re III, MD, MSCE, shows that people with hepatitis C still frequently meet with insurance denials for once-a-day pills that became available in the United States in 2014 and have a 95 percent cure rate, with few side effects. Read more.

Providing aids such as nicotine patches and chewing gum doesn't help employees kick the smoking habit, and neither does giving them e-cigarettes, shows new research led by by Scott Halpern, MD, PhD. Supplementing the aids with financial incentives is three times more effective than giving them alone. Read more.

Dogs born in the summer are at higher risk for heart disease than pups born at other times of year, according to a new study led by Mary R. Boland, PhD. Exposure to outdoor air pollution during pregnancy and at the time of birth, a culprit previously implicated in a study of humans, may be to blame. Read more.

Children and adults treated with some oral antibiotics have a significantly higher risk of developing kidney stones, finds a study by Gregory Tasian, MD, MSCE, and Michelle Denburg, MD, MSCE. “The overall prevalence of kidney stones has risen by 70 percent over the past 30 years, with particularly sharp increases among adolescents and young women,” says Dr. Tasian. Read more.

Douglas Wiebe, PhD, argues that we need to use more rigorous research methods and a patient-centered approach to a clinical/surgical issue he has experienced personally.

What evidence do we have—and what evidence is still missing—about how cannabis and its derivatives harm or benefit our health? Sean Hennessy, PharmD, PhD, comments in detail for the public affairs show Up to Date.

A study led by Christopher Morrison, PhD, shows that on the days they hosted President Trump's campaign rallies, cities saw an average of 12% more assaults. Dr. Morrison is a postdoctoral fellow of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics.

Just 10 opioid pills, or a three-day supply, is the recommended prescription for acute pain. Making that the electronic-medical-records system default effectively "nudges" physicians toward this approach that leaves little room for misuse or abuse, found a new study led by M. Kit Delgado, MD, MS.

In this moving commentary, M. Kit Delgado, MD, MS, writes from direct experience about the unacceptable number of U.S. fatalities that result from drunk driving. Dr. Delgado, an emergency physician-investigator, and colleague Douglas Wiebe, PhD, contributed to a new report by a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Children who eat fish at least once a week sleep better and have IQ scores that average four points higher than those who consume fish less frequently or not at all, according to research by Jennifer Pinto-Martin, PhD, and colleagues. Their findings were published in Scientific Reports, a Nature journal.

Research from Junko Takeshita, MD, PhD, MSCE, shows minorities are less likely than whites to seek treatment for the skin disease—even though their conditions tend to be more severe.

Joel M. Gelfand, MD, MSCE, talks with Philadelphia's ABC Action News about additional concerns for psoriasis patients: For every 10 percent more skin surface affected, their risk of Type 2 diabetes rises about 20 percent.

During the 2014–2015 West African Ebola epidemic, many argued that randomized clinical trials—our most reliable way of evaluating new treatments and vaccines—were neither ethical nor feasible in an environment with limited health infrastructure, where severe disease was causing many fatalities. Susan Ellenberg, PhD, and colleagues look at the trials that did occur and comment on strategies for the future.

Research by Audrey Blewer, MPH, of Penn’s Center for Resuscitation Science and the DBEI, reveals that outside of hospitals, men are much more likely than women to get CPR. The article focuses on a study she presented at the recent American Heart Association Scientific Sessions.

In continuing coverage of innovative transplant work by David Goldberg, MD, MSCE, and Peter Reese, MD, MSCE, their trial’s first recipient of a hepatitis-C-infected heart comments on how life has improved since he got the new organ and underwent successful treatment for the infection.

Can drinking enough fluid via a “smart” water bottle help prevent recurrence of urinary stones? Peter Reese, MD, MSCE, and Greg Tasian, MD, MSc, MSCE, lead one of five centers in a new NIH-sponsored research network that will pursue The Prevention of Urinary Stones with Hydration (PUSH) study, a randomized clinical trial.

A physician’s “nudge” frames a set of choices to steer toward a particular option without shutting out other options. Scott Halpern, MD, PhD, M.Bioethics, believes this practice can improve the patient’s experience.

What can we learn from the clinical response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa? Susan Ellenberg, PhD, comments.

Recurrent cases of Clostridium difficile, the most common healthcare-linked infection in the U.S., are soaring, found James Lewis, MD, MSCE in a new study. How safe is our most promising treatment? “While we know that fecal microbiota transplantation is generally safe and effective in the short term, we need to establish the long-term safety of this procedure,” says Dr. Lewis.

We can safely offer 1,000 more transplant kidneys in the U.S. every year to people like Irma Hendricks, asserts David Goldberg, MD, MSCE in this NBC Nightly News coverage. A call from Peter Reese, MD, MSCE, changed Hendricks's life: "I can get you a transplant, but I'm going to have to give you hepatitis C to do it."

Mary Sammel, ScD, also works to improve people’s health and wellbeing as part of her personal life. She and her family are volunteer puppy raisers for The Seeing Eye, an organization that trains guide dogs for the visually impaired.

"The substantial variation in prescribing patterns of such extremely addictive medications for minor injuries results in many thousands of pills entering the community and places patients at an increased risk of continued use and potentially addiction," says lead author M. Kit Delgado, MD, MS

Cigarette smokers may boost their risk of clogged heart arteries by weakening a gene that otherwise protects these important blood vessels, researchers have found. "This has been one of the first big steps towards solving the complex puzzle of gene-environment interactions that lead to coronary heart disease," said study lead author Danish Saleheen, PhD.

Can we dramatically increase the supply of transplant kidneys by using some that are hepatitis C infected, then eradicating the disease in the recipient? Peter Reese, MD, MSCE, and David S. Goldberg, MD, MSCE, report via early data that the answer appears to be yes.

“Instead of shooting arrows in the dark to find a drug that would be beneficial, we can now make an informed choice about the beneficial and harmful effects of pharmacological inhibition of a wide range of pathways,” comments Danish Saleheen, MBBS, PhD, one of the lead authors of a major study in Nature this week. An international research collaborative team studied more than 1,800 individuals who carried loss-of-function mutations in both copies of their genes, so-called “human knockouts."

Depression is common during the transition to menopause, but which women are most at risk for major depressive disorder? Mary Sammel, PhD, co-authored a new study that shows those who experience multiple traumatic events early on are more than twice as likely, during perimenopause.

The latest Testosterone Trial results, published in JAMA and JAMA Internal Medicine, include findings on cognition, bone health, heart health and anemia. Susan Ellenberg, PhD, commented that the treatment is not likely to be a magic bullet for patients, but that it may lead to improvements for them in some areas—bone density, in particular.

The Testosterone Trials’ latest results, published in JAMA and JAMA Internal Medicine, show that testosterone treatment for men over age 65 who have low levels of the hormone offers some benefits and not others. Co-author Susan Ellenberg, PhD, commented, “I don’t think anybody would interpret these results as saying, ‘Wow, this is a fountain of youth.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer chronicles the research of Daniel Rader, MD, and Danish Saleheen, MD, into the role that cholesterol and triglycerides play in human biology—and how that in turn applies to clinical cardiology.

Adults with severe psoriasis are more than twice as likely to experience vertebral fractures, Alexis Ogdie, MD, and colleagues report in Annals of Rheumatic Disease.

Sean Hennessy, PharmD, PhD, speaks in depth on the Lancet podcast “United States of Health,” reviewing the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s widely anticipated report on the current evidence about marijuana. Listen to The Lancet’s podcast.