Katherine Unger Baillie

Before winter had even ended, the warnings came in: 2017 was going to be a bad one for Lyme disease.

A new study led by University of Pennsylvania researchers has found that the oral microbiome is affected by diabetes, causing a shift to increase its pathogenicity.

Cities are on a collision course with nature.

 

It’s no secret that communities across the United States differ greatly. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s World Well-Being Project sought a simple way to capture, explore and share such differences on a large scale.

Even in healthy individuals, the skin plays host to a menagerie of bacteria, fungi and viruses. Growing scientific evidence suggests that this lively community, collectively known as the skin microbiome, serves an important role in healing, allergies, inflammatory responses and protection from infection.

A collaboration between biologists and materials scientists at the University of Pennsylvania is yielding new insights into the wings of the “skipper butterfly” in the Costa Rican rainforest. What they learn could lead to technological advancements in systems ranging from power-efficient computer displays to sensors to energy efficient buildings, windows and vehicles.

Though most tooth decay can be blamed on bacteria, such as Streptococcus mutans, the fungus Candida albicans may be a joint culprit in an alarmingly common form of severe tooth decay affecting toddlers known as early childhood caries.

Certain pediatric leukemias share a common underlying cause with treatment-related secondary leukemias. Both diseases involve translocations in the KMT2A gene, in which a portion of this gene is swapped out with DNA from a “partner” gene on a separate chromosome.

In a new study, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia examined the factors influencing the likelihood of missed nu