UTMB News Articles

While the marketing departments of big soda companies would like us to think diet soda is healthy, the research seems to indicate otherwise. Dr. Samuel Mathis reviews the health benefits and risks of drinking diet soda in this column.

In the mid-2000s, Dr. Suszanne Klimberg, currently Chief of Surgical Oncology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, noticed that many of her patients from rural areas came in with late-stage breast cancer. It turned out that they have had no access to breast screening, where they lived. This motivated Dr. Klimberg to search for a simple screening method to be used at primary care level to detect the disease at an early stage, and this is how the idea of development of an easily deployed lab test to screen for breast cancer was born.

Today, iodine is on the World Health Organization list of essential medicines. Iodine is still added to common table salt to prevent goiters. In this episode of Medical Discovery News, Dr. Norbert Herzog and Dr. David Niesel trace back the origins of iodine treatment, from a Civil War battlefield.

A three-year-old will ask many “why” questions about their surroundings. While the questions might be difficult such as why the sky is blue the answers can be as simple as “I’m not sure. Let’s look it up?” Dr. Sally Robinson discusses how to strengthen memory abilities with children in this week’s column.

University of Texas Medical Branch and Texas Southern University are partners in a national effort to increase diversity and inclusion of underserved communities in clinic trials. Equitable Breakthroughs in Medicine Development (EQBMED), led by Yale School of Medicine, Morehouse School of Medicine, the Research Centers in Minority Institutions Coordinating Center (RCMI) at Morehouse School of Medicine, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, is a partnership bringing clinical trial sites closer to the community to further equity and access for diverse populations.

All human research is reviewed by an IRB — researchers submit proposals detailing the purpose of the investigation, the procedures, the risks and benefits, consent forms, and more. The committee decides whether or not the proposal is acceptable and may ask for revisions, which can take weeks or months depending on how often a given IRB convenes. “If I’m doing a project on something related to reproductive technology in Texas, versus Massachusetts, they might be really different considerations,” said Emma Tumilty, a bioethicist at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

We generally think of good health in terms of diet, exercise, sleep and mental attitude. We also need to consider as fundamental the amount of water that we drink. Dr. Victor S. Sierpina writes about importance of drinking enough water and why it might be better to have a glass of water before your morning coffee.

Research has shown that acupuncture may be beneficial for a number of pain conditions, writes Dr. Hasan Yasin in a column for the GCDN. Yasin suggested patients speak to their doctor about alternative or complementary treatments.

A neuroscientist and transplant surgeon at UTMB stumbled upon the realization that transplant patients exhibited a low frequency of dementia, write Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel in their latest Medical Discovery News column. The discovery could have huge implications for the treatment of Alzheimer’s and dementia, they write.

UTMB’s Dr. Janak Patel spoke to CBS News about the CDC’s potential elimination of isolation requirements after testing positive for COVID-19. "We have to be very cautious that perhaps another variant that escapes our immunity completely may emerge and may require different precautions," Patel says. "Once we make policy in this forward manner, if we had to have a situation where we would need more caution, it will be very hard to go back to more prolonged isolation."

UTMB’s School of Nursing is in the top 25. Becker’s shared the news that the SoN’s online master’s program was ranked 12th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. UTMB’s School of Nursing was the top ranked program in the state of Texas.