Perelman School of Medicine

Understanding the origins of emerging diseases – as well as more established disease agents -- is critical to gauge future human infection risks and find new treatment and prevention approaches. This holds true for malaria, which kills more than 500,000 people a year. Symptoms, including severe anemia, pregnancy-associated malaria, and cerebral malaria, have been linked to the parasite’s ability to cause infected red blood cells to bind to the inner lining of blood vessels.

At least half of Parkinson’s disease patients experience psychosis at some point during the course of their illness, and physicians commonly prescribe antipsychotic drugs, such as quetiapine, to treat the condition. However, a new study by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan Medical School, and the Philadelphia and Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Centers and suggests that these drugs may do significantly more harm in a subset of patients. The findings will be published in the March 21 issue of JAMA Neurology.

Possessing two X chromosomes is a double-edged sword, immunologically speaking. Females are better at fighting off infection than males, but they are also more susceptible to many autoimmune conditions, such as lupus.

Benjamin Aaron Garcia, PhD, a Presidential Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been selected to receive the 2016Protein Science Young Investigator Award.

WHO:            Weingarten Learning Resources Center                      University of Pennsylvania

Physicians are prescribing more opioid painkillers than ever before to patients undergoing common surgeries, according to new research from the department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

The number one killer of HIV patients in resource-limited areas, including parts of Africa and India, is tuberculosis (TB), underscoring the need for optimal treatments and effective strategies to address this deadly co-infection.

An international team of investigators led by experts at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has been awarded a nearly $3 million, five-year grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to establish diagnostic criteria for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

State laws that require drivers who’ve been convicted of drunk driving to pass a breathalyzer-type test before starting their cars saved an estimated 915 lives between 2004 and 2013, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at th

The kidney is the most commonly transplanted organ in the United States, with more than 17,000 transplants performed each year. Following kidney transplant, patients are routinely placed on a regimen of immunosuppressant medications to prevent organ rejection, which often includes calcineurin inhibitors (CNIs) as the backbone medication of this regimen.