Health Sciences

HDL is the “good cholesterol” that helps remove fat from artery walls, reversing the process that leads to heart disease. Yet recent drug trials and genetic studies suggest that simply pushing HDL levels higher doesn’t necessarily reduce the risk of heart disease. Now, a team led by scientists from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has shown in a large, forward-looking epidemiological study that a person’s HDL function—the efficiency of HDL molecules at removing cholesterol—may be a better measure of coronary heart disease risk and a better target for heart-protecting drugs.

While advances in technology have made multigene testing, or “panel testing,” for genetic mutations that increase the risk of breast or other cancers an option, authors of a review published today in the New England Journal of Medicine say larger studies are needed in orde

The rapidly emerging field of precision medicine is a “disruptive innovation” that offers the possibility of remarkably fine-tuned remedies to improve patient health while minimizing the risk of harmful side effects, says J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, dean of the Perelman School of Medicine and executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System, in this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

A cancer patient’s expectations about the benefits of complementary and alternative (CAM) and their perceived access to CAM therapies are likely to guide whether or not they will use those options, according to a new study published ahead of print in the journal CANCER from researchers at Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. 

By Madeleine Stone  @themadstone Kang Ko never planned to become a typical dentist. Long before he came to the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine to pursue his degree, he fell in love with teaching and research. 

An important link between the human body clock and the immune system has relevance for better understanding inflammatory and infectious diseases, discovered collaborators at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Trinity College, Dublin.

Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD, was presented with the 2015 Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) Distinguished Investigator Award for Career Achievement and Contribution to Clinical and Translational Science for translation from clinical use into public benefit and policy at the organization’s sixth annual meeting last month in Washington, D.C.

Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania received a $400,000 grant from the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation (CFCF), a non-profit that funds research for carcinoid, pancreatic, and related neuroendocrine cancers (NETS), to investigate the use of an experimental gene therapy that engineers immune cells to attack cancers.

If you have a map, you can know where you are without knowing which way you are facing. If you have a compass, you can know which way you're facing without knowing where you are. Animals from ants to mice to humans use both kinds of information to reorient themselves in familiar places, but how they determine this information from environmental cues is not well understood.

In a North Philadelphia rowhome, four students from the School of Veterinary Medicine are examining Pebbles, a friendly cocker spaniel. She’s a little overweight but otherwise healthy. “She has a great hairdo,” fourth-year student Hannah MacAyeal tells Billy, Pebbles’ owner.