UTMB News

  • At League City hospital, Zen and the art of human mechanics

    To coincide with National Nurses Week, the medical branch’s League City campus opened a “Zen room” Thursday to allow employees to unwind and unload their burnout and stress. “The overall goal of the Zen den was to create a dedicated space for clinical staff to go relax, recharge and to help reduce symptoms of burnout that are caused by the daily work they do,” said Christine Wade, hospital administrator.

  • Exercise can give you a 'natural high'

    This feeling often is attributed to the release of endorphins, natural painkillers released by the body that are thought to create a general feeling of well-being. This is probably a myth though because endorphins cannot cross into the brain. Read more about it in Medical Discovery News.

  • De-stress, find healing in nature and wild places

    Drs. Victor S. Sierpina and Michelle Sierpina encourage us to get our toes in the sand soon. “It should be no surprise that we benefit cognitively and psychologically from time away from daily stress,” they wrote in their column. See you on the beach.

  • UTMB Partners With UT El Paso To Improve Medical Imaging

    The University of Texas Medical Branch partners with UT El Paso on deep learning approach to improving lung region segmentation accuracy in chest x-ray images. The model is one of the first products created in partnership leveraging medical expertise at UTMB and computational expertise with machine learning and artificial intelligence at UT El Paso.

  • An image of a pill capsule full of gears

    UTMB drug discovery partnership awarded $56 million grant

    Thanks to a $56 million grant, the University of Texas Medical Branch and global health care company Novartis will enhance their work together to discover drugs to fight off the next pandemic. The grant comes from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and is one of nine such grants awarded by NIAID to establish Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern.

  • The promising treatment for long COVID we’re not even trying

    Early anecdotes about Paxlovid’s effects on long COVID are intriguing, but no one’s testing them in clinical trials yet. Vineet Menachery, a coronavirus expert at the University of Texas Medical Branch, believes long-term infection is probably “more common than we think,” he told Katherine Wu.

  • Heart attack death rate in U.S. far greater than other high-income countries

    American medical facilities typically have access to the latest healthcare technology and generally boast low readmission rates among heart attack patients. New research reports that America’s one-year heart attack death rate is one of the highest among studied high-income nations. Dr. Peter Cram, professor and chair of internal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Center at Galveston, was one of the research collaborators. “From a U.S. perspective, our heart attack care is good, but the one-year mortality rate is concerning,” Cram said. “If dying is one of the things we want to prevent, then we have work to do.” News Medical, All Health Books, World Health and Medical Economics also reported on this comparative studied published in The BMJ.

  • UTMB League City earns trauma designation

    The Texas Department of State Health Services recently recognized the University of Texas Medical Branch’s League City campus as a Level III trauma facility. “Our hospital continues to provide higher levels of care as it continues to grow,” administrator Christine Wade said. “We are proud to be the first trauma center to serve League City.”

  • League City nurse shows another side through acting

    League City registered nurse Nori Head is heading in new directions after retiring from her position as the nursing program manager and senior research nurse coordinator in the neuropathology and infectious disease division at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. She's acting in plays in local community theaters and working part-time as a nurse with a vaccine research group.

  • New COVID treatment available for immunocompromised

    People with immunocompromising conditions might be unsure whether their COVID-19 vaccinations will protect them from severe disease. Many may also be unaware aware there’s now a treatment, Evusheld, that can protect and allow them to lead more normal lives. Drs. Meagan Berman and Richard Rupp explain in the latest Vaccine Smarts column.

  • AI makes colorectal cancer screening better

    “Now for the first time, artificial intelligence was used in conjunction with the standard colonoscopy to reduce the rate at which polyps are missed by nearly a third,” write Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel in the latest Medical Discovery News column.

  • Sometimes, normal 'forgetting' can be beneficial

    Among older adults, such memory concerns represent a daily complaint in the primary care setting. Most patients fear that the slightest forgetfulness predicts progressive senility, dementia or even Alzheimer’s Disease. Drs. Victor S. Sierpina and Michelle Sierpina write that forgetting things once in a while can be healthy.

  • image of Black female sneezing into a tissue in front of plant with pink flowers and green leaves

    Seasonal Allergies 101

    Board-certified allergy expert Dr. Jennifer McCracken joined Meagan Clanahan of the Houston Moms Blog to discuss helpful tips and tricks about seasonal allergies.

  • If you've had omicron before, are you safe from infection by the new variants?

    Pei-Yong Shi, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said omicron is really unique because it has an incredible ability to change or evolve in a way that allows it to just zoom past the immune system, and it does this very quickly. “In terms of the ability to evade antibodies, omicron is a master player,” Shi said. “It’s way more efficient than all the previous variants. Like, in this case, sometimes you just need one key mutation there that can totally flip things around.” But Shi emphasized that there's no sign this new variant causes more severe disease compared to the previous omicrons.

  • Opinion: We’re sick of thinking about COVID. But here are the key questions we still need to answer

    A Canadian researcher points to work led by Dr. Vineet Menachery at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston on the virus's nucleocapsid protein, which in animal models is a control on severity. There could be mutations happening outside of the spike protein, where the majority of mutations occur, that we have no idea what the functional consequences would be. That could make the virus potentially more transmissible, more infectious or more pathogenic. And that's really scary to think about.

  • Heart attack mortality rate higher in the US compared to other h

    A study published May 4 in The BMJ found substantial differences in care for heart attack patients across six high-income countries despite international agreement on how heart attacks should be treated. “From a U.S. perspective, our heart attack care is good, but the one-year mortality rate is concerning,” said Dr. Peter Cram, professor and chair of internal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Center at Galveston, who is one of the authors of the study. “If dying is one of the things we want to prevent, then we have work to do.” Physician’s Weekly and others also reported on the comparative study.