Health Sciences

Nearly 60,000 Americans suffer from myasthenia gravis (MG), a non-inherited autoimmune form of muscle weakness. The disease has no cure, and the primary treatments are nonspecific immunosuppressants and inhibitors of the enzyme cholinesterase.

Every morning this past July, Max Emanuel, a veterinary student at the University of Pennsylvania, would get up and drive to work. But Emanuel’s was no run-of-the-mill morning commute.

Obesity is a risk factor for many health problems, but a new Penn Medicine study published this month in the journal Sleep suggests having a larger tongue with increased levels of fat may be a sign of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in obese adults.

It’s an early lesson in genetics: we get half our DNA from Mom, half from Dad. But that straightforward explanation does not account for a process that sometimes occurs when cells divide. Called gene conversion, the copy of a gene from Mom can replace the one from Dad, or vice versa, making the two copies identical.

The introduction of antiretroviral drugs in Botswana over the last two decades has increased the life expectancies of people living with HIV—many of whom are women co-infected with the  human papillomavirus virus (HPV)—considerably: from 39 years to the low 60s.  As a result, this co-infected group of women is at a much higher risk of developing HPV-associated cervical cancer.

As long as humans have been alive, they’ve been seeking ways to extend life just a little longer. So far no one has found the fountain of youth, but researchers have begun to understand how humans age, little by little, offering hope for therapies that may blunt the effects of time on the body.

“Knowledge is power” is an old saying. Another cliché warns, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” When it comes to getting inoculated against the Human Papilloavirus (HPV), it seems that neither saying is true. In fact, according to a study by a multidisciplinary University of Pennsylvania research team, knowledge may in fact be a meaningless thing.

Maintaining the ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, is a requisite feature of cells that are able to continuously divide and also a hallmark of human cancer.

More than half of human cancers have abnormally upregulated chemical signals related to lipid metabolism, yet how these signals are controlled during tumor formation is not fully understood.

Study after study has proven it true: exercise is good for you. But new research from University of Pennsylvania scientists suggests that exercise may have an added benefit for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.