UTMB News

Dr. Praveeena K. Gupta designed and manufactured the Ring-IT, a tactile 3-dimensional bottle ring adaptor that improvs the identification and dosing frequency of eye drops for low-vision patients, at the Maker Health Space Medical Fabrication Laboratory at UTMB. The Ophthalmology Times reported that Gupta and her colleagues believe that their study “holds breakthrough potential to catalyze a shift in clinical practice, providing a practical tool to enhance topical eye drop adherence in patients with visual impairment.”

UTMB medical student Johnny Dang wrote about being the child of Vietnamese immigrant parents pursuing the dream of studying medicine for in-Training, an online peer-reviewed publication for medical students. “I arrived at medicine on my own accord, but now that I am here, there is still a pressure to see this American dream fairy tale through,” Dang writes. “From my parents’ perspective, all those days showing up to work while ill, the vacation time never taken, and the years having never been back to Vietnam even once have to amount to something, right?”

The Olympics are set to start later this summer in Paris just as Europe is suffering from yet another outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease, write Drs. Richard Rupp and Megan Berman in their latest Vaccine Smarts column.

Ashwagandha is a common supplement Dr. Samuel Mathis says he recommends to patients. “This plant is rich in anti-inflammatory properties, alkaloids, and a type of molecule known as withanolides, a steroid-like compound that is believed to be the primary agent responsible for ashwagandha’s effect,” Mathis writes in his Daily News column.

Have you ever heard of a cancer that could be eliminated by vaccination, ask Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel in their Medical Discovery News column. Human papilloma viruses (HPV) cause 90 percent of cervical cancers, and there is a vaccination to prevent HPV infection yet only 21 percent of people have received it, they write.

While the attention on breast cancer awareness is good, doctors agree that there should be just as much emphasis on women’s heart health. UTMB’s Dr. Fatima Khan tells Flow Space that one of the challenges is that women do not have the same signs and symptoms as men. “Most of the literature in the books and educational material is based on the research done on men, since we did not know for ages that heart disease can also impact women,” says Khan.

UTMB was named a recipient of the 2024 MAP Award for High Performance in Revenue Cycle, sponsored by the Healthcare Financial Management Association. Becker’s reports that “the MAP Award recognizes providers that have excelled in meeting industry standard revenue cycle benchmarks, implemented best practices embodied in HFMA's Healthcare Dollars & Sense initiatives, focused their efforts on improving price transparency, and achieved outstanding patient satisfaction.”

UTMB President Dr. Jochen Reiser spoke to Becker’s about artificial intelligence in health care. “This is clearly with enormous potential, not only for diagnostics but also for operational use, ultimately creating more time for doctors and providers to do what they love to do which is to spend time with the patients,” Reiser told Becker’s.

UTMB and Texas A&M University are partnering to create tools that replicate female organs involved in pregnancy to allow medical drug testing for pregnant women. “If you go to Walgreens and look at their pharmacy aisle and pick up an over-the-counter drug, it may say ‘not tested in pregnancy,’” Dr. Ramkumar Menon told the Daily News. “We have developed a way to test both the mother and baby in a lab environment.”

The reclassification of marijuana will change the way researchers will be able to study the drug, Dr. Kathryn Cunningham told the Daily News for a story on the U.S. Justice Department’s move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug. “By reducing it to Schedule III, we would facilitate the research and allow laboratories to gain much more information and knowledge about the impact of marijuana and its constituents on public health,” Cunningham said.

“Overall, the evidence points to higher temperatures resulting in more bird-mosquito transmission and more what we call spillover infections to people,” Dr. Scott Weaver tells Grist for this article on how a changing climate is contributing to the spread of West Nile Virus.

Growing demand for surgical procedures to treat chronic pain and other medical conditions is contributing to shortages of anesthesia care providers, according to an op/ed in Anesthesiology. UTMB’s Dr. Amr Abouleish was the lead author of the op/ed and told the Pain News Network that “the labor supply-demand imbalance for anesthesia clinicians has reached critical levels, with major implications for safe and effective patient care."

Dr. Hasan Yasin’s latest column explores the various health benefits associated with sunlight exposure. From mood to production of vitamin D and other positive effects, sunlight has many benefits, Yasin writes.