Medicine | Penn Today

Doctor wearing a face mask sits at a desk looking at an x-ray with a masked patient.

COVID’s impact on cancer care comes more into focus

With the disruption of cancer care since the pandemic began in March 2020, recent reports are starting to show that the interruption—while still significant—may not be as detrimental as experts originally feared.

Stephen Gluckman’s polio vaccination card

From polio pioneer to COVID-19 crusader

Stephen Gluckman, infectious disease specialist and director of Penn Global Medicine, reflects on past and present vaccines.

Ingredient in Indian long pepper shows promise against brain cancer

Penn scientists use cryo-electron microscopy to illuminate how a chemical compound found in the plant, piperlongumine, works against glioblastoma.

In the vaccine trenches with Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman

Key breakthroughs leading to the powerful mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 were forged at Penn, and the COVID-19 vaccines may only be the beginning of its impact on 21st-century medicine.

Vaccination rates keep rising in some Philly suburbs, as others plateau, facing access and hesitancy challenges

Harald Schmidt of the Perelman School of Medicine looks at COVID-19 vaccination access versus demand. As demand slows, he says, the question of access becomes key.

For future medical breakthroughs, we must rebuild research lost to COVID

Dean J. Larry Jameson of the Perelman School of Medicine and others wrote about the importance of restarting research paused due to the pandemic.

Teen girl footballers have double concussion risk of boys

With teenage girls who play football running nearly twice the risk of concussion as teenage boys and take longer to recover, Abigail Bretzin of the Perelman School of Medicine highlights the need for female-specific studies in athletics.

Pregnant person in a hospital bed with an EKG monitor beside the bed.

Why young, pregnant women develop heart failure similar to older patients

Researchers at Penn Medicine uncover more genetic mutations that predispose women to peripartum cardiomyopathy, with implications for the future of increased genetic testing.

Gloved hand administering a blood sugar finger test to a hand of an African American person.

Racial, gender, and socioeconomic factors linked to likelihood of getting diabetes treatment

Penn Medicine researchers show Black, Asian, female, and lower-income patients with diabetes receive less sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors compared with overall trends.

The immune link between a leaky blood-brain barrier and schizophrenia

For people with schizophrenia and other mental disorders, a more permissive blood-brain barrier appears to allow the immune system to get improperly involved in the central nervous system. The inflammation that arises likely contributes to the clinical manifestations of neuropsychiatric conditions, according to new findings from a team led by researchers from the School of Veterinary Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). “Our hypothesis was that, if the immune function of the blood-brain barrier is compromised, the resulting inflammation will have an impact on the central nervous system,” says Jorge Iván Alvarez, an assistant professor at Penn Vet and senior author on the work, published in the journal Brain.

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