The effects of climate change on human health – and what to do about them
May 9, 2017
Every week it’s something new. Last week, the BBC ran a story about an outbreak of anthrax in Siberia, the result, researchers believe, of an old reindeer carcass released by melting permafrost. The week before, ArsTechnica had a feature article associating a new kind of kidney disease with exposure to chronic heat and dehydration, common in …Read More
Prescribing mHealth: One strategy proves helpful for blood pressure control
April 27, 2017
Many patients who resist taking a blood pressure drug are willing to try a combination wearable device and phone app that helps them control their own blood pressure, said Laura Wilt at a recent Stanford symposium on mobile health. Wilt (second from left in the photo), who is the senior vice president & chief information officer of Ochsner Health System, …Read More
“Oh, my! It’s in everything!” Stanford group encourages people to ditch sugar for a week
April 26, 2017
Do you sigh for cinnamon rolls, pine for pastries, or lust after lemon meringue pie? You aren’t alone, and Stanford Medicine wants to help. But maybe not in the way you hope. A Stanford Prevention Research Center group is inviting people this month to the “No Added Sugar Challenge” event, during which participants try to abstain …Read More
Wearable sweat sensor can diagnose disease, Stanford-led study finds
April 17, 2017
A team of researchers at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley have created a wristwatch-style device that can potentially be used to monitor diseases such as cystic fibrosis or prediabetes. The device, which detects sweat, was tested on a small group of volunteers who were either healthy or had cystic fibrosis — a genetic …Read More
False advertising suggests that “natural” cigarettes are safer, new research shows
April 13, 2017
As the percentage of Americans who smoke continues to drop (currently about 15 percent from a high of 44 percent in the 1950s), the tobacco industry has had to hunt for new ways to market cigarettes. One strategy that seems effective is convincing consumers that certain types of cigarettes are safer than others, even if that …Read More
Tiny bubbles raise hope for biopsy-free cancer diagnosis
April 3, 2017
A Stanford Medicine team has developed a compelling way to diagnose cancer without a biopsy. In the technique, patients are intravenously injected with bubbles a little smaller than human red blood cells. The microbubbles, which are capable of latching onto the cancer cells but not healthy cells, sail through the blood vessels until they reach …Read More
A Darwin Day delve into how the chipmunk got its stripes
February 10, 2017
This Sunday is Darwin Day, the 208th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday. As the great biologist Ernst Mayr wrote, “…no biologist has been responsible for more — and for more drastic — modifications of the average person’s worldview than Charles Darwin.” To honor Darwin and his theory of evolution by common descent, I reached out …Read More
Stanford librarians and volunteers help safeguard government data
February 7, 2017
If you want to make a history buff sigh, mention the Library of Alexandria, a center of learning that may have held hundreds of thousands of ancient scrolls, or Turkey’s Library of Celsus, pictured here. Like all the great libraries of antiquity, they were eventually destroyed. Modern digital information — stored on servers or in physical …Read More
Science gets political: The March for Science
February 1, 2017
Last weekend’s post-inauguration Women’s March was one of the largest demonstrations in recent times. The march — which spread to all seven continents, including Antarctica — championed an array of issues including reproductive rights and immigration reform. Some marchers held handmade signs expressing …Read More
Science organization webinar warns of a “war on scientists”
January 30, 2017
With so much happening in the Trump administration, I jumped at the chance last week to listen to a webinar on the future of science under the new president. On Thursday, the American Association for the Advancement of Science hosted an interview (registration required) with Norman Ornstein, PhD, a political scientist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, on …Read More
An inside look at immune cells might eventually shorten wait times for cancer patients
January 19, 2017
Anyone who has had an encounter with cancer knows about waiting. You have to wait for test results, wait for appointments and wait to see if a particular treatment is working. A treatment that works for some patients is ineffective for others. Months can go by while the patient and the medical team wait until …Read More
Stanford study shows wearable sensors can tell when you’re getting sick
January 12, 2017
When Mike Snyder, PhD, settled in for a long flight to Norway on a family vacation last year, he noticed changes in his heart rate and blood oxygen levels. Like a lot of people, Snyder, professor and chair of genetics at Stanford’s medical school, wears an activity monitor that measures his heart rate. Unlike most …Read More
Taking the brakes off science
January 10, 2017
A team of experts on how science works has issued a set of policies that could help accelerate science. Their article appears in the brand new scientific journal Nature Human Behavior. Anyone who has been waiting decades for President Nixon’s 1970s-era War on Cancer to “cure cancer” appreciates that science sometimes seems to proceed at a snail’s pace. …Read More
A test for an autoimmune disease reveals what your cells are cooking up
December 22, 2016
Most of us know that the genetic information that makes us who we are is encoded in the DNA in our cells. But that information has to be transcribed and translated into other molecules that actually make the body work. That process is called gene expression. Think of the DNA in each cell as a …Read More
Research transparency depends on sharing computational tools, says John Ioannidis
December 15, 2016
A team of scientists including Stanford’s John Ioannidis, MD, DSc, has proposed a set of principles to improve the transparency and reproducibility of computational methods used in all areas of research. The group’s summary of those principles, known as the Reproducibility Enhancement Principles, was published recently in a paper in Science. The effort is an attempt …Read More
Drug combinations that help breast cancer patients discovered using data science
December 12, 2016
When computer scientist Andrew A. Radin came to Stanford University School of Medicine and enrolled in a biomedical informatics course, he was just there to learn. For a class project, he made a software platform that used a range of different methodologies to find diseases that might be helped by already existing drugs. Each methodology …Read More
Diagnose this: A look at anticipating and preventing disease
November 17, 2016
As discussed here earlier this week, the new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine explores the meaning and future of diagnostics. But what exactly is diagnostics? For a patient with an infection, it might just mean finding out which pathogen is causing the infection so a doctor can prescribe the right antibiotic. Or finding out why a …Read More
Patient data shows that common prostate cancer treatment likely doubles risk of dementia
October 13, 2016 Improved methods for analyzing patient medical records support the suspicion that a common cancer treatment may increase the risk of dementia. Such methods may soon make similar studies almost as easy as a Google search, said Nigam … Continue reading →
Mystery solved: Researchers use genetic tools to diagnose young girl’s rare heart condition
September 26, 2016 Right after Astrea Li was born, she went into cardiac arrest, not just once, but repeatedly. It was all her doctors at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford could do just to keep her alive. Soon, a far-flung team … Continue reading →