UTMB News Articles

Five University of Texas Medical Branch primary investigators received competitive grant awards totaling $1,722,433 from the Trauma Research and Combat Casualty Care Collaborative for six research projects.

HealthDay highlighted a study led by UTMB’s Dr. Monique Pappadis that found that low health literacy is associated with worse perceived physical health and greater depressive symptoms among adults with traumatic brain injury.

There are an estimated one to four million cases of cholera worldwide annually and as many as 143,000 people die of the disease each year, write Drs. Richard Rupp and Megan Berman in this week’s Vaccine Smarts column. There is a vaccine approved in the U.S., Vaxchora, but it can be hard to find.

In this week’s column, Dr. Hasan Yasin shares insights from a recent medical conference where the topics of marijuana and psychedelics use in medicine garnered lots of attention.

Integrating radiology and pathology could produce hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and improve patient care UTMB’s Dr. Eric Walser and Dr. Christopher Zahner explained at a meeting of the Radiology Business Management Association. “We need to put diagnostics first. Right now, we are the backseat drivers. We need to become the front-seat drivers,” Walser said at the meeting.

There are many reasons why measles has made a comeback in the U.S. but one thing is certain: COVID-19 is not to blame. “There’s no evidence that covid—or the vaccine—is adversely affecting people’s immune systems,” UTMB’s Dr. Richard Rupp told Gizmodo.

While many institutions in the U.S. showed a decrease in scientific output in the latest Nature Index, UTMB is one of the few institutions bucking the trend. In fact, UTMB is among the top 10 “fastest rising institutions in North America” according to Nature.

“I'm aware it doesn't look good, and I would get it treated if I got it," UTMB’s Dr. Harold Pine says. "But if I got a little bit of cauliflower ear, I absolutely would wear it as a badge of honor." Pine and Dr. Nicholas Rossi, a resident at UTMB, spoke to ESPN about cauliflower ear – a deformity of the ear that usually comes with wrestling, boxing and other martial arts.

UTMB’s Dr. Gregory Gray spoke to the New York Times about the unusual outbreak of bird flu among dairy cows. These infections represent the first time that a highly pathogenic bird flu virus, which is often fatal in birds, has been detected in U.S. cattle, the Times reported. The disease seems to be spreading from cow-to-cow, scientists speculate.

To prepare graduating medical students for residency, a new type of “bootcamp” has popped up across the country. UTMB’s Dr. Sidra Qureshi and Dr. Amy Gonzalez codirect a transition to residency course at UTMB and spoke to AAMC about some of the skills covered.