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Discoveries
Research Briefs
The truth about consequences
In a recent study of women with breast cancer,
DMS researchers identified a puzzling
consequence of invasive forms of the disease.
There have been concerns for some time that
powerful chemotherapy treatments can cause
a decline in mental capacity. The DMS
team wondered if maybe the cancer itself
might affect cognitive performance before
treatment even began. They showed in
Breast Cancer Research and Treatment that
this was, indeed, the case for some women
with invasive breast cancer. Women with
noninvasive cancer, however, did not suffer
any pretreatment cognitive decline.
Web and the M.D.
Many doctors make less use than their patients
do of web-based medical information.
DMS researchers carried out a study of internet
use by primary-care providers in Vermont
and New Hampshire. "Studies suggest,"
they wrote in Family Medicine, "that
while patients want recommendations
of online health resources fromtheir
providers, few receive them." The researchers
found that supplying providers with computers,
high-speed internet access, and training
did increase their use of web-based resources—but the doctors still remained loyal to other,
less up-to-date sources of information.
Pain in the brain
Glial cells are often overshadowed by neurons,
theirmore famous neighbors in the nervous
system, but they may be essential to an
understanding of chronic pain. A group of
DMS researchers reported in the journal
Brain Research that two types of glial cells—microglia and astrocytes—play an important
role in the onset and maintenance
of long-term pain in rats. Chronic
pain can be sparked by major surgery or cancer,
among other causes, and current treatments
are often ineffective or have serious
side effects. The DMS team wrote that their
work "may help in developing innovative
strategies to treat chronic pain conditions."
Does change have the upper hand?
Not all change is for the better, concluded a
study by DMS orthopaedist Kenneth Koval,
M.D. He reported in the Journal of Bone and
Joint Surgery that between 1999 and 2007,
many early-career surgeons began using a
different technique to treat broken
wrists—without producing better outcomes.
The shift from percutaneous
fixation (in which the bone is aligned
using pins inserted through the skin) to open
treatment (an invasive procedure using
screws or plates to set the bone) may, he said,
reflect pressure "to offer new techniques to a
medical market that is constantly searching
for the latest in technological advancement."
Thinking about drinking
Between 1982 and 1988, the U.S. military
set a drinking age of 21 on all U.S. bases and
instituted programs to prevent alcohol abuse.
According to members of the DMS Department
of Psychiatry, those efforts resulted in
some dramatic changes. In a paper in Military
Medicine, the team showed that
from 1992 to 2003, alcohol treatment
rates dropped by 60% for young male
veterans, compared with about a 25%
drop for the general male population during
that period. The findings, they argue, support
earlier work "suggesting that adolescent alcohol
use, even in late adolescence,may contribute
to later problem drinking."
Playing defense
The immune systemis the body's best defense
against the spread of cancer, but the system's
dendritic cells actually play a role in sustaining
tumor growth. Members of the microbiology
and immunology department
reported in Cancer Research that
targeting certain dendritic cells led
tomore effective treatment of ovarian cancer
in mice. They found that depleting the number
of dendritic cells made it harder for the
cancer to spread and, surprisingly, strengthened
the immune response. Used with standard
chemotherapy, this technique "significantly delayed cancer progression."
DMS was recently awarded multiyear grants to study colon cancer prevention ( $19 million), lung biology ( $10.5 million), and the effects of exposure to toxic metals ( $14.5 million).
A team led by Michael Whitfield, Ph.D., has discovered distinct genetic profiles for different types of scleroderma, an autoimmune disorder that affects the connective tissues in the body.
DMS interventional radiologists found that in treating an aortic aneurysm from a blunt trauma injury, endovascular repair—done from inside the blood vessel—is better than surgery.
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