Health Sciences

Denis Kinane has been appointed to a second term as dean of the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

When trying to enroll in a health insurance plan through HealthCare.gov during the first open enrollment period of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) health insurance marketplaces, young adults were confused by unfamiliar health insurance terms, concerned about the affordability of plan options, and unsure how to seek good primary care.

Although a goal of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act was to provide Medicaid patients with a source of nonemergency care outside of hospital emergency departments (EDs), researchers suggest that these newly enrolled patients will likely continue to look to EDs for treatment of chronic diseases and other nonemergency issues, despite state attempts to impose fees on ED visits.

Michael Platt has been named the University of Pennsylvania’s 16th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, effective July 1.  

For diabetics, a quick prick of the finger can give information about their blood glucose levels, guiding them in whether to have a snack or inject a dose of insulin. Point-of-care glucose meters, or glucometers, are also used in the veterinary world to monitor cats and dogs with diabetes or pets hospitalized for other reasons.

Stress during the first trimester of pregnancy alters the population of microbes living in a mother’s vagina. Those changes are passed on to newborns during birth and are associated with differences in their gut microbiome as well as their brain development, according to a new study by University of Pennsylvania researchers.

More than one-third of counties in the Unites States are located more than 50 miles from the nearest gynecologic oncologist, making access to specialty care for ovarian and other gynecologic cancers difficult for nearly 15 million women.

According to a new study, women experiencing difficulty with time management, attention, organization, memory, and problem solving – often referred to as executive functions – related to menopause may find improvement with a drug already being used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

By Madeleine Stone  @themadstone In any textbook diagram, a group of red blood cells, skin cells or nerve cells will typically be identical in size. But, just as no two people are quite the same height and weight, in a population of real cells there are larger and smaller individuals.

Around-the-clock rhythms guide nearly all physiological processes in animals and plants. Each cell in the body contains special proteins that act on one another in interlocking feedback loops to generate near-24 hour oscillations called circadian rhythms.