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UTMB researchers awarded $2M grant to study pain

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:25:00 GMT

Researchers at UTMB have been awarded a $1.8 million, five-year grant to apply methods of gene therapy to pain that arises from malfunctions in the nervous system, known as neuropathic pain. Neuropathic pain is caused by accidental or disease-induced nerve damage and is difficult to treat, said Dr. Volker Neugebauer, co-principal investigator of the grant. Long-term neuropathic pain can cause depression, which further increases the perception of pain. Conventional pain medicines block the pain signal but only for a short time. Neugebauer and co-principal investigator Thomas Green will target a different part of the brain to see if they can prevent the emotions from forming in the first place.

Laser procedure new option for cancer treatment?

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:23:00 GMT

Continuing coverage: There may soon be a new option for men suffering from prostate cancer. The treatment involves a laser and has already shown promising results in studies overseas. This laser procedure is something in between watchful waiting and the radical prostate surgery. And right now they're testing it with men who have early cancer.

Salute to Nurses: Area nurses receive top honors for unwavering dedication to patients

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:20:00 GMT

For the past 12 years, the Houston Chronicle has joined with organizations around the country to recognize, honor and celebrate these often behind-the-scenes heroes of our community. At this year’s Salute to Nurses Luncheon, the Houston Chronicle recognized 100 top nurses, including UTMB’s Jeanne Key and Stephanie DeJongh.

Multi-Share Plan helps with health care costs

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:18:00 GMT

Craig Kovacevich, associate vice president of health care transformation, explains that the UTMB Multi-Share Plan “is a benefits program, not health insurance, offered to employees who work for small businesses in Galveston County that employ between two and 50 employees.” [Note: This article was written by UTMB’s Maureen Balleza of the Office of Marketing and Communications. Send your story ideas to public.affairs@utmb.edu.]

Inside UTMB: Free screening mammograms

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:16:00 GMT

News in this week’s Inside UTMB: Schools, business areas, administrative offices and most clinics will close Monday for Memorial Day; UTMB and The Ruth Kempner Endowment for Breast Cancer are teaming up to provide free screening mammograms for uninsured women; Dr. Karen Szauter recently was honored by the American Association of Medical Colleges with the Career Educator Award; UTMB recently awarded the Robert L. Moody Prize for Brain Injury Research to Dr. Jennie Ponsford; Dr. Tasnee Chonmaitree was an invited speaker at the Frontiers of Science seminar series in Turku, Finland.

Some animals can reproduce without sex

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:14:00 GMT

In this week’s Medical Discovery News with UTMB’s David Niesel and Norbert Herzog: What do the New Mexico whiptail lizard, the water flea, the marbled crayfish, the boa constrictor and the bonnethead shark have in common? All these animals can create offspring without a fertilized egg. This means a diverse group of animals can produce young by “virgin births,” without sexual contact. This is not a new concept but we are now recognizing the wide diversity of species capable of virgin births. The news also appears in the Galveston County Daily News.

Crispy treat might not be healthy but it’s delicious

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:12:00 GMT

In this week’s column by UTMB’s Dr. Victor S. Sierpina: Let’s face it: Bacon is attractive as a food. It smells and tastes good, has lots of saturated fat calories, sodium and consequently adds flavor to anything it comes into contact with. Yet, it isn’t the healthiest of foods for many reasons.

Virgin births on the rise

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:24:00 GMT

Medical Discovery News
By Drs. David Niesel and Norbert Herzog

What do the New Mexico whiptail lizard, the water flea, the marbled crayfish, the boa constrictor and the bonnethead shark have in common? All these animals can create offspring without a fertilized egg. This means a diverse group of animals can produce young by “virgin births,” without sexual contact. This is not a new concept but we are now recognizing the wide diversity of species capable of virgin births.

This nonsexual process of reproduction in animals is called parthenogenesis, from the Greek word for virgin birth. In the blockbuster movie “Jurassic Park” one of the precautions taken was that only female dinosaurs were produced by recombinant DNA methods, to prevent them from reproducing uncontrollably. But when paleontologist Alan Grant (played by actor Sam Neill) and the children escaped from a Tyrannosaurus rex, they saw hatched dinosaur eggs. This showed that the female dinosaurs in the park were reproducing by the process of parthenogenesis.

Basic biology teaches that the process of reproduction has a strict requirement: a sperm and an egg must unite to create a fertilized egg that will develop into an embryo. During this process, a re-assortment of the male and female chromosomes occurs, which are then reduced to the normal level. This process of chromosome reduction is meiosis. In parthenogenesis, because there is only the set of female chromosomes, meiosis does not occur. And since all the chromosomes come from the mother, all the offspring are females, identical clones of the mother.

Parthenogenesis is risky to a species because it does not allow for increasing genetic diversity, a hallmark of sexual reproduction. Without genetic diversity, mutations can be passed down to new generations, which can accumulate and have damaging effects on the species. One clever mechanism for parthenogenic organisms to achieve genetic diversity is used by bdelloid rotifers, microscopic freshwater animals. They have evolved the ability to “grab” DNA from their environment and incorporate it into their own genome, handing down this new genetic information to the next generation. This must be successful, since this species has not had a male member (or any sex) in at least 40 million years!

Over the past decade, several new animals were found to be capable of parthenogenic reproduction in captivity. For example, female Komodo dragons that had not been in the presence of a male produced offspring that were genetically identical to the mothers. In nature, these lizards were thought to reproduce only sexually, so this was a surprise. In addition, a bonnethead shark and a boa constrictor were also found to produce genetically identical female offspring without sexual contact.

In all these cases, scientists do not know what triggers this nonsexual mechanism of reproduction. It seems certain that the process can sustain the species when no males are available. In itself, this may represent an evolutionary adaptation to preserve a species.

Science faces a frontier in terms of understanding parthenogenesis in the animal world. Understanding the signals that trigger this process could help save endangered species on Earth. And the possibility that biomedical science could bring this ability to humans means that it could also be a future concern for medical ethics and society.

Medical Discovery News is a weekly radio and print broadcast highlighting medical and scientific breakthroughs hosted by professor emeritus, Norbert Herzog, and professor, David Niesel, biomedical scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Learn more at www.medicaldiscoverynews.com.

UTMB awarded $4.9 million grant to improve health care for the elderly

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:08:00 GMT

The University of Texas Medical Branch has been awarded a $4.9 million grant for the state’s first federally funded center to study how best to care for and promote the health and well-being of elderly patients.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research in the Elderly center will be led by Dr. James S. Goodwin, director of UTMB’s Sealy Center on Aging. The center will include investigators from UTMB’s four schools and will also draw resources from numerous departments and specialties at UTMB.

“The overall goal is to promote patient-centered care, by determining the range of different outcomes most important to patients with different diseases, and how well currently available treatments help achieve those outcomes,” said Goodwin.

“It is important to add that our investigators will work closely with UTMB Health System leadership to assess models for patient-centered care and shared decision making throughout the clinical enterprise and to fully integrate the principles of patient-centered care into training programs across our four schools,” said Dr. Danny O. Jacobs, executive vice president and provost and dean of the School of Medicine.

The program supports three research projects and includes educational, dissemination and infrastructure cores. The principal investigators for the projects are Dr. Howard Brody, director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities and professor in the department of family medicine, Timothy Reistetter, associate professor in the department of occupational therapy, and Kristin Sheffield, assistant professor in the department of surgery.

UTMB researchers will collaborate with their counterparts at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Oregon Health and Science University.

The grant was provided by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

More than one-third of Texas women still receive unnecessary breast biopsy surgery

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:14:00 GMT

In spite of the benefits of minimally invasive breast biopsy, new research from UTMB published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons shows that expensive, invasive surgical breast biopsies remained the first diagnostic step for 35 percent of women diagnosed with a breast mass between 2000 and 2008 in Texas. The investigators performed an exhaustive analysis of Texas Medicare data from 2000 to 2008, including more than 87,000 breast biopsies. “We need to get the word out to women across the state that surgery is not the procedure of choice for definitive diagnosis of a breast mass,” said senior author Dr. Taylor Riall.