Perelman School of Medicine

Quitting smoking sets off a series of changes in the brain that Penn Medicine researchers say may better identify smokers who will start smoking again—a prediction that goes above and beyond today’s clinical or behavioral tools for assessing relapse risk.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects at least one in four Americans who are older than 60 and can significantly shorten lifespan. Yet the few available drugs for CKD can only modestly delay the disease’s progress towards kidney failure.

Space is one of the most demanding and unforgiving environments. Human exploration of space requires astronauts to maintain consistently high levels of cognitive performance to ensure mission safety and success, and prevent potential errors and accidents.

New Penn Medicine research has found that elevated levels in the blood of the brain-enriched protein calpain-cleaved αII-spectrin N-terminal fragment, known as SNTF, shortly after sports-related concussion can predict the severity of post-concussion symptoms in professional athletes.

Human existence is basically circadian. Most of us wake in the morning, sleep in the evening, and eat in between. Body temperature, metabolism, and hormone levels all fluctuate throughout the day, and it is increasingly clear that disruption of those cycles can lead to metabolic disease.

Programming electronic health records to make generic drugs the default choice when physicians write prescriptions may offer one way to reduce unnecessary spending and improve health care value in the face of spiraling U.S.

Most patients with implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs)—small devices placed in a person’s chest to help treat irregular heartbeats with electrical pulses, or shocks—haven’t thought about device deactivation if they were to develop a serious illness from which they were not expected to recover.  But given changes in healthcare, there may be a new reason to do so.  A n

Members of the public in counties with higher median household incomes are more likely to step into action to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, when they witness someone have a cardiac arrest, according to a new study led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

The bed bug may be just as dangerous as its sinister cousin, the triatomine, or “kissing” bug.

Black patients who have been diagnosed with heart failure are no less likely than white patients to get atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia), according to a new study led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, which was presented today at the 201