Health Sciences

If you were about to enter a crowded subway during flu season, packed with people sneezing and coughing, wouldn’t it be helpful if your immune system recognized the potentially risky situation and bolstered its defenses upon stepping into the train?

Penn Medicine researchers have begun a new immunotherapy trial with the “checkpoint inhibitor” known as pembrolizumab in patients with oligometastatic lung cancer—a state characterized by a few metastases in a confined area—who have completed conventional treatments and are considered free of active disease but remain at a high risk for recurrence.

Sharp and significant increases in suicides followed select financial crisis events and austerity announcements in Greece, from the start of the country’s 2008 recession to steep spending cuts in 2012, Penn Medicine researchers report in a new study published online this week in the British  Medical Journal Open, along with colleagues from Greece and the United Kingdom.

A new discovery shows how a simple intervention—self-affirmation—can open our brains to accept advice that is hard to hear.  

Peripheral nerve injury (PNI) is a common consequence of traumatic injuries, wounds caused by an external force or an act of violence, such as a car accident, gun shot or even surgery. In those injuries that require surgical reconstruction, outcomes  can result in partial or complete loss of nerve function and a reduced quality of life. But, researchers at Penn Medicine have demonstrated a novel way to regenerate long-distance nerve connections in animal models using tissue-engineered nerve grafts (TENGs).

Women in their late thirties and forties who have trouble sleeping are more than three times more likely to suffer sleep problems during menopause than women who have an easier time getting shut-eye, according to a new study by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

For small children, being hospitalized is an especially frightening experience above and beyond the challenges of whatever they are being treated for. They are often connected to a variety of unpleasant tubes and monitors, which they may instinctively try to remove.    

One of the most troubling complications of diabetes is its effect on wound healing. Roughly 15 percent of diabetics will suffer from a non-healing wound in their lifetime. In some cases, these open ulcers on the skin lead to amputations.

Joshua Plotkin of the University of Pennsylvania has been named winner of the 2015 Akira Okubo Prize, awarded jointly by the International Society for Mathematical Biology and the

Tens of millions of people around the world have abnormal, leak-prone sproutings of blood vessels in the brain called cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs). These abnormal growths can lead to seizures, strokes, hemorrhages, and other serious conditions, yet their precise molecular cause has never been determined. Now, cardiovascular scientists at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have studied this pathway in heart development to discover an important set of molecular signals, triggered by CCM-linked gene defects, that potentially could be targeted to treat the disorder.