Health Sciences

Penn Medicine researchers, in a continuation of their groundbreaking work to better understand how anesthesia works in the body, have found the first new class of novel anesthetics since the 1970s. Their findings, published in February issue of Anesthesiology, detail the processes through which the group uncovered these compounds.

As the United States population has doubled since 1955, the number of inpatient psychiatric beds in the United States has been cut by nearly 95 percent to just 45,000, a wholly inadequate equation when considering that there are currently 10 million U.S. residents with serious mental illness.

To survive and fulfill their biological functions, cells need to take in material from their environment. In this process, proteins within the cell pull inward on its membrane, forming a pit that eventually encapsulates the material in a bubble called a vesicle.

One of the keys to Songtao Shi’s productive career in research came from a seemingly humble item: his daughter’s first baby tooth.

When retrievable inferior vena cava (IVC) filters were approved for use in the United States in 2003 to prevent pulmonary embolism among patients unable to receive the standard blood thinner treatment, many experts anticipated most of them would be removed when no longer needed and IVC filter complications would decrease.

Here’s another potential reason to live up in the mountains. Lung cancer rates in both smokers and non-smokers are lower in higher-elevation counties in the western part of the United States, suggesting that oxygen may promote the incidence of lung cancer, according to a new study co-authored by a student at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

One of nanotechnology’s greatest promises is interacting with the biological world the way our own cells do, but current biosensors must be tailor-made to detect the presence of one type of protein, the identity of which must be known in advance.      

Nearly 70 percent of smokers who try to quit relapse within one week – daunting odds for people trying to kick the habit. Researchers have long theorized that some individuals may be genetically programmed to have an easier time than others, but with few clues about why, experts have been unable to guide smokers looking to quit toward a strategy – the nicotine patch versus prescription pills, for instance – with the best chance of success.

Transcatheter aortic valve replacement, or TAVR, has been called one of the biggest advances in cardiac surgery in recent years. The procedure delivers a new, collapsible aortic valve through a catheter to the valve site within the heart - a repair that otherwise requires open heart surgery.