Health Sciences

It’s not only physicians and nurses who can make a difference in health care. Sometimes it takes a history major and some careful observation to help effect positive change.

Knocking out one or both crucial regulatory genes caused cleft lip, skin barrier defects, and a host of other developmental problems in mice, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, hinting that abnormalities in these molecular pathways could underlie many birth defects that are presently not well understood.

People with congenital stationary night blindness, or CSNB, have normal vision during the day but find it difficult or impossible to distinguish objects in low light. This rare condition is present from birth and can seriously impact quality of life, especially in locations and conditions where artificial illumination is not available.

Sometimes when the immune system makes small mistakes, the body amplifies its response in a big way: Editing errors in the DNA of developing T and B cells can cause blood cancers.

Like the hairs they resemble, cilia come in all lengths, from short to long.  But unlike the hair on our heads, the length of sensory cilia on nerve cells in our noses is of far more than merely cosmetic significance.

Consequences of incarceration on former inmates and their families are well known. But how does imprisonment affect the health care system as a whole?

A multiple myeloma patient whose cancer had stopped responding after nine different treatment regimens experienced a complete remission after receiving an investigational personalized cellular therapy known as CTL019 developed by a team at the University of Pennsylvania.

The widespread practice of incentivizing mammogram completion via cash payments, typically by insurance companies and ranging from $10 to $250, is unethical according to a Viewpoint article published this week in JAMA by an expert from the 

Almost all human beings are exposed to the respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, before their second birthdays. For most, the symptoms mimic those of the common cold: runny nose, coughing, sneezing, fever.

Most studies of psychological mechanisms involve watching those mechanisms in action and then devising a theory for how they work.