UTMB’s Dr. Sarah Samreen shared insights and advice regarding surgical weight loss with KPRC. “Surgery is safe and can allow patients to lose weight without being on medication for life,” she tells KPRC.

Dopamine plays a crucial role in our motivation, reward system, learning and even motor control. Understanding its importance and how to naturally influence its levels can significantly impact well-being and productivity, writes Dr. Hasan Yasin.

Once a safe, effective vaccine already exists, giving some participants in a vaccine study a placebo means knowingly withholding protection, write Drs. Richard Rupp and Megan Berman. So, when scientists need to test an updated version of an existing vaccine, instead of giving half the group a placebo, scientists compare the immune response from the new version to what was seen in earlier, already successful trials, Berman and Rupp explain in their Vaccine Smarts column.

Because of the increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, scientists are looking to bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, as a treatment for bacterial infections, write Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel in this week’s Medical Discovery News column.

“My goal is to push innovation down to the desktop,” UTMB Vice President and CIO George Gaddie told Becker’s. UTMB signed a five-year deal with Microsoft to use the company’s AI and cloud computing capabilities. “We have not just made IT more innovative; we’ve made the organization more innovative, where if people have ideas, they can try them. They’ve got the tools necessary, the training necessary, they’ve got the expertise, the confidence,” Gaddie said. This news was also reported by hoodline.

"Saying we're going to devote resources to studying therapies instead of enhancing uptake of the vaccine is a profoundly inefficient way of addressing a vaccine-preventable disease," UTMB’s Dr. Susan McLellan told AFP for a story on the continued measles outbreak in the U.S. The story was picked up and printed in news outlets around the world including France 24, The Strait Times, News Central and The Times of India, among many others.

There is science to back up the need for humans to experience awe in their lives, writes Dr. Samuel Mathis in his latest column. For example, one study found that individuals who experience awe daily had lower levels of stress, fewer sick symptoms, and a greater sense of well-being.

While AI can support clinicians in many ways that will benefit patients, it should not replace “real, flawed, human empathy, we must keep the soul of medicine intact,” writes UTMB’s Dr. Jarell De Matas.

“Cardiovascular health is failing, especially in women, and there are no signs that this stagnation is going back to a normal trend,” UTMB’s Dr. Octavio Bramajo tells the Daily News. Bramajo and Dr. Neil Mehta recently published a study that found that cardiovascular disease is the main reason for a growing life-expectancy gap between the United States and other high-income countries.

Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel explore the different ways of controlling mosquitoes including new research that uses spider and sea anemone venom to kill mosquitoes when they breed.