Medicine

What is esketamine?

Following FDA approval of esketamine as a nasal spray to address otherwise untreatable cases of depression, Michael Thase, a professor of psychiatry at Penn Medicine, explains what it is and how it came to be.

Brandon Baker

Negotiating a truce in the war on drugs

A Penn Law symposium brought together experts from the legal, law enforcement, social work, and policy camps to discuss how to refocus the decades-long fight to be less punitive and more protective.

Gwyneth K. Shaw

Shining a (UV) light on hospital infections

A rolling, six-foot-tall UV light device assigned to each floor of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania rids hospital rooms of harmful organisms after every discharge, preventing infection.

Penn Today Staff

With a second patient free from HIV, what’s next?

Scientists have succeeded in sending an HIV patient into long-term remission, only the second time such a feat has been documented. Pablo Tebas and Bridgette Brawner discuss what this means for HIV research and for people living with the virus.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Immune profiling: A new opportunity for drug development

Immunologists, oncologists, and infectious disease specialists are thinking about the immune system in a new way based on its integral and ubiquitous ties to human health, amassing data on its role in gastroenterology, neurology, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic disease.

Penn Today Staff

Opioids and hepatitis C: How OxyContin fed a new epidemic

A new study from LDI senior fellow Abby Alpert, with David Powell and Rosalie Pacula, links OxyContin reformulation to a national epidemic of hepatitis C, which kills more than 20,000 Americans a year and infects tens of thousands more.  

Penn Today Staff



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Philadelphia Inquirer

Inside Penn’s transfer center

Penn Medicine’s transfer command center gets patients from affiliated hospitals and hospitals outside Philadelphia to specialized care that can save lives, with comments from CEO Kevin Mahoney.

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Philadelphia Inquirer

Operating rooms are major sources of greenhouse gasses. Penn is eliminating a form of anesthesia that hangs in the air for more than a decade after use

Penn Medicine is phasing out the anesthesia desflurane at four of its six hospitals to eliminate harmful greenhouse gases, with remarks from Greg Evans.

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Philadelphia Inquirer

Broad Street runners from Penn are racing with gyroscopes to study the Achilles tendon

Casey Jo Humbyrd and Josh Baxter of the Perelman School of Medicine and colleagues will track data from running the Broad Street Run to understand how a healthy Achilles tendon functions.

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National Geographic

What is topical steroid withdrawal? If you have eczema, here’s what you should know

Bruce Brod of the Perelman School of Medicine says that prolonged or overuse of topical steroids can cause rosacea, skin thinning, stretch marks, and an extreme and debilitating withdrawal.

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Philadelphia Inquirer

Mayor Parker’s plan to ‘remove the presence of drug users’ from Kensington raises new questions

Shoshana Aronowitz of the School of Nursing and Ashish Thakrar of the Perelman School of Medicine comment on the lack of specificity in Philadelphia’s plan to remove drug users from Kensington and on the current state of drug treatment in the city.

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Philadelphia Inquirer

How many patients would recommend their Philly-area hospital to family and friends? Check your local hospital

The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania has been named one of the most recommended acute-care facilities by patients in the Philadelphia area.

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