Default

Science Life: News and Ideas in BioMedicine

May 16, 2012

Poets in White Coats

By Rob Mitchum When a doctor pulls a notepad out of his or her white coat, you might expect them to be writing down a drug prescription. But a recently completed contest thrown by the Prizker School of Medicine suggests that physician might be scrawling down a few lines of verse as well. The first annual [...]

May 15, 2012

A New Model for Anxiety…and More

by Rob Mitchum An advantage and disadvantage of hypothesis-free studies looking for genes associated with various traits or diseases is that they often point to genetic candidates that don’t make immediate sense. One example of this occurrence was the 2005 discovery of an association between the gene Glo1 and anxiety-like behaviors in mice. Previously, scientists knew [...]

May 11, 2012

Hacking the Brain’s Security System

by Rob Mitchum The brain is a privileged organ, afforded protections denied to all the other organs of the body. Though the circulatory system functions much the same way above and below the neck, using blood to exchange nourishment for waste with cells, the exchange is conducted under much heavier security in the central nervous system. [...]

May 10, 2012

A Healthy Sex Life After a Heart Attack

by Tiffani Washington Whether it’s from a movie, celebrity hearsay or some other largely fictional account, most of us can recall a tale of someone experiencing a heart attack in the throes of passion. In reality, only about 1 percent of all heart attacks occur during sex, and far less than 1 percent of heart [...]

May 8, 2012

The Unintended Consequences of the NCAA Sickle Cell Screening Policy

By Matt Wood In 2006, Dale Lloyd II, a 19-year-old freshman football player at Rice University, collapsed during a conditioning workout and died the next day. His death was linked to complications from sickle cell trait, or having one of the genes that causes sickle cell disease. At least 20 deaths of football players with sickle cell [...]

May 4, 2012

From Beehives to Prostate Cancer Treatment

by Rob Mitchum A common feature of pharmacies and organic grocery stores is the aisle of natural remedies, featuring bottle upon bottle of herbs, extracts, and oils that promise a wide range of medical benefits. For legal reasons, the health claims made by these products are often fuzzy, boasting of vague antioxidant or anti-inflammatory activity. But [...]

May 2, 2012

Organ donation in Illinois gets a little help from friends

by Dianna Douglas Forty years ago, discussing your plans to donate your organs if you were to become brain dead was considered extremely poor taste.  “People didn’t talk about death and demise in polite company,” said Allen Anderson, MD, associate professor of medicine. He’s director of the advanced heart failure program at the University of [...]

May 1, 2012

Q&A: Dr. Martin Leland on ACL Injuries

by Rob Mitchum and Matt Wood When superstar Derrick Rose crumpled to the ground late in the Chicago Bulls game Saturday, the playoff hopes of Chicago basketball fans followed suit. Experienced sports fans saw the point guard grabbing at the front of his left knee and thought immediately of three dreaded letters: A, C, and L. [...]

April 30, 2012

When Art and Science Meet Halfway

by Rob Mitchum Too often, art and science are treated as intellectual adversaries. Educational systems typically route students toward one pole or the other, with the artistic and scientific spheres rarely intersecting by the time one reaches the undergraduate and graduate levels. But for the last two years, the University of Chicago has paved a path [...]

April 27, 2012

Crunching the Numbers on the Rate of Suicide Among Veterans

By Matt Wood In a recent column in the New York Times, Nick Kristof pointed out a startling statistic: for every American soldier killed in combat this year, 25 will commit suicide. A report from the Center for a New American Security says that from 2005 to 2010, service members took their own lives at a [...]