UTMB News

A new blood test developed by the biomedical technology company SomaLogic in Boulder, Colorado, focuses on proteins in the blood that could provide an early warning for heart disease and stroke patients. Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel discuss the research in Medical Discovery News.

Dr. Michael P. Sheetz Robert A Welch Distinguished University Chair in Chemistry in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

The Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) has awarded Dr. Michael P. Sheetz the Pearse Prize for his “long and illustrious career in mechanobiological research”.

Image of Kimberly Branum - a breast cancer patient and survivor featured in the Think Pink special section of the Galveston County Daily News. UTMB Health sponsors the special section.

Kimberly Branum, a breast cancer survivor and breast reconstruction patient shares her philosophy that it's essential to expect the good when you're fighting for your life.

Dr. Peter Cram, chair of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, is one of three prominent physician health care policy leaders calling for the phasing out of the readmissions reduction program. The team’s position appeared Oct. 6 in an op-ed in Jama Network.

University of Texas Medical Branch researchers were part of an international team using data and artificial intelligence to identify current drugs that could be applied to treat new COVID-19 variants.

Jeff Temple, a licensed psychologist and University of Texas Medical Branch professor, told Parents that caregivers should be "be patient, non-judgmental, and open to conversation. You don't have to be an expert to know someone [your child] is struggling. You just must be a caring person who wants to help. This shows the person [child] that they can lean on you for support." It also helps to validate their feelings, reducing fear and helping your child feel less embarrassed, ashamed and alone.

Adults 65 and older should receive either Fluzone HD or Fluad, explained Drs. Meagan Berman and Richard Rupp in Vaccine Smarts. If these options are not available, Flublok is the next best thing, and it is a good choice for adults 50 to 64 years of age. Still, if none of these three are available, a standard injected flu vaccine is much better than remaining unvaccinated.

Recently, a large study in Great Britain has examined how humans sleep. The researchers classified sleep patterns into five different clusters and 16 different types of sleep. It is so much more complex than most of us ever imagined, wrote Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel in Medical Discovery News.

Roughly 10.5 million children worldwide have a parent or caregiver who died from COVID-19, according to a modeling study, published Sept. 6 in JAMA Pediatrics. “I really appreciate this team’s effort to try to keep the issue of COVID-related orphans in front of the research and policy communities,” says Michael Goodman, an applied social epidemiologist at the University of Texas in Galveston. “We as a research community, as policy influencers — we as a society are not off the hook for these children.”

Gary Kobinger, an Ebola expert who was involved in the early development of the Merck vaccine, applauded the efforts to use this opportunity to try to add an Ebola Sudan vaccine to the world’s armamentarium against Ebola viruses. “It is great to see WHO leading efforts to have a clinical study evaluating a … vaccine to protect against this deadly pathogen,” said Kobinger, who directs the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

About 10 million Americans experience SAD, which is a form of depression that usually affects people from mid to late fall through the early days of spring. “The most common misconception is that it is ‘just’ winter blues and not that big of a deal,” said Dr. Jeff Temple, licensed psychologist and professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch. “On the contrary, it impacts millions of Americans with symptoms consistent with major depression.”

For licensed psychologist and trauma expert Jeff Temple, it’s no shock that Uvalde is top of mind during these situations. Temple is also the director of the Center for Violence Prevention at the University of Texas Medical Branch and vice dean of research for the School of Nursing. He spoke with the Texas Standard about trauma that sticks with us.

“We know that vegetables, including beans, leafy greens, tomatoes, squashes, onions and fruits have many chemicals, such as flavonoids, carotenoids, fiber, vitamins, minerals and additional bioactive substances that can help in preventing cancer,” wrote Dr. Victor S. Sierpina in his column.

A tourist attraction for medical history buffs might be the garden shed where Edward Jenner gave the first vaccination to his gardener’s 8-year-old son in 1796. In Medical Discovery News, Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel explained Jenner’s life and work.