85 posts · 39,322 views
Science Life is a guide to the changing world of biomedicine, as seen from our home at the University of Chicago Medical Center. We’re interested in clinical and theoretical advances – from new kinds of cancer treatments to new ideas about how life evolved. Patients can visit this blog to ask questions or offer their own insights into diseases and therapies. Doctors and scholars can trade ideas about the latest studies or controversies. And anyone curious about the life sciences can join us in figuring out what this fascinating field means for our everyday lives.
Rob Mitchum
84 posts
Matt Wood
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- November 21, 2011
- 01:38 PM
- 86 views
Texting: A Doctor in Your Pocket?
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
Texting has grown from technological fad to a primary route of communication popular around the world. With cell phones in the pockets of people of all incomes and ages, the quick, no-frills conversations enabled by texting have made almost everyone more proficient with their thumbs. Due to such impressive ubiquity, people in health care are [...]... Read more »
Dick JJ, Nundy S, Solomon MC, Bishop KN, Chin MH, & Peek ME. (2011) Feasibility and usability of a text message-based program for diabetes self-management in an urban african-american population. Journal of diabetes science and technology, 5(5), 1246-54. PMID: 22027326
- November 15, 2011
- 10:21 AM
- 84 views
The Controller of Hippos and Yorkies
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
How does an organ know when to stop growing? It may sound like a riddle, but it’s a serious biological question with the potential for grave consequences. During development, an organism grows from a single cell up to trillions of cells. If that growth process overshoots its goal and doesn’t stop generating new cells, the [...]... Read more »
Boggiano, J., Vanderzalm, P., & Fehon, R. (2011) Tao-1 Phosphorylates Hippo/MST Kinases to Regulate the Hippo-Salvador-Warts Tumor Suppressor Pathway. Developmental Cell, 21(5), 888-895. DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2011.08.028
- November 8, 2011
- 11:26 AM
- 110 views
Lonely Hearts, Disrupted Sleep
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
Loneliness has had a tough run of late, with a growing body of research blaming it for everything from high blood pressure to heart disease to depression and cognitive decline. The research group of John Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, has been among the leaders [...]... Read more »
Kurina, L., Knutson, K., Hawkley, L., Cacioppo, J., Lauderdale, D., & Ober, C. (2011) Loneliness Is Associated with Sleep Fragmentation in a Communal Society. SLEEP. DOI: 10.5665/sleep.1390
- November 3, 2011
- 01:37 PM
- 79 views
A Tiny Turntable and a Nano-Portal
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
When scientists picture the miniature machines that live inside cells, they often have to settle for indirect evidence and a bit of imagination. Proteins on the nanoscale - one million times smaller than a millimeter - can’t be seen with your typical microscope, so scientists turn to electrical measurements, genetic mutations, and chemical assays to [...]... Read more »
Allen, M., Gemel, J., Beyer, E., & Lal, R. (2011) Atomic Force Microscopy of Connexin40 Gap Junction Hemichannels Reveals Calcium-dependent Three-dimensional Molecular Topography and Open-Closed Conformations of Both the Extracellular and Cytoplasmic Faces. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 286(25), 22139-22146. DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M111.240002
- November 2, 2011
- 03:59 PM
- 118 views
A Story of Climate Change Told Through Seashells
by Matt Wood in ScienceLife
By Matt Wood
Sometimes scientific discoveries happen by accident. Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity when a uranium rock he left wrapped up in a drawer with some X-ray equipment imprinted itself on a photographic plate. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin when he noticed that mold growing in a staphylococcus culture was killing all the bacteria around it. In [...]... Read more »
Pfister, C., McCoy, S., Wootton, J., Martin, P., Colman, A., & Archer, D. (2011) Rapid Environmental Change over the Past Decade Revealed by Isotopic Analysis of the California Mussel in the Northeast Pacific. PLoS ONE, 6(10). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025766
- July 7, 2011
- 12:32 PM
- 465 views
The Tools of the Human Microbiome
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
The latest cult favorite in the sphere of human genetics is the microbiome, the genes of the bacterial species that live inside and upon the human body. Because bacterial cells outnumber human cells in an adult by approximately ten to one, and tens of thousands of different species make up the human ecosystem, studying this [...]... Read more »
Wang Y, Devkota S, Musch MW, Jabri B, Nagler C, Antonopoulos DA, Chervonsky A, & Chang EB. (2010) Regional mucosa-associated microbiota determine physiological expression of TLR2 and TLR4 in murine colon. PloS one, 5(10). PMID: 21042588
- June 30, 2011
- 11:48 AM
- 461 views
Can a Clinical Trial Go to Seed?
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
By John Easton
In most clinical trials the targets are patients, volunteers with a disease who sign up for a study to help advance medical knowledge and perhaps lead to better treatments for what ails them. But this week a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine revealed that sometimes the real targets are not so [...]... Read more »
Alexander GC. (2011) Seeding Trials and the Subordination of Science: Comment on "Study of Neurontin: Titrate to Effect, Profile of Safety (STEPS) Trial". Archives of internal medicine, 171(12), 1107-8. PMID: 21709112
Krumholz SD, Egilman DS, & Ross JS. (2011) Study of Neurontin: Titrate to Effect, Profile of Safety (STEPS) Trial: A Narrative Account of a Gabapentin Seeding Trial. Archives of internal medicine, 171(12), 1100-7. PMID: 21709111
- June 28, 2011
- 11:40 AM
- 533 views
Cultural Custom-Fitting to Combat Obesity
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
Countless campaigns have been launched to steer schoolchildren toward healthy habits, and yet rates of childhood obesity and diabetes continue to soar. Celebrity endorsements, catchy catchphrases, and food pyramid redesigns have struggled to combat the allure of fast food and television in the battle for child health in the United States. But with childhood obesity [...]... Read more »
Burnet DL, Plaut AJ, Wolf SA, Huo D, Solomon MC, Dekayie G, Quinn MT, Lipton R, & Chin MH. (2011) Reach-out: a family-based diabetes prevention program for African American youth. Journal of the National Medical Association, 103(3), 269-77. PMID: 21671531
- June 27, 2011
- 11:32 AM
- 443 views
What Happens to Gorillas on the Pill
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
In zoos, keepers strive to preserve as much of the natural experience as possible for their animals. But not everything can be left up to nature behind zoo walls. While encouraging reproduction can be a zoo mission for captive endangered species, other species can’t be allowed to procreate without limits, lest the zoo run out [...]... Read more »
Sarfaty A, Margulis SW, & Atsalis S. (2011) Effects of combination birth control on estrous behavior in captive western lowland gorillas, Gorilla gorilla gorilla. Zoo biology. PMID: 21674603
- June 13, 2011
- 10:03 AM
- 218 views
A New, Old Weapon Against Cancer
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
The treatment of cancer is growing more and more specialized, as researchers and pharmaceutical companies test strategies designed to attack very specific types of tumors. A success of this approach received an avalanche of publicity this past week at the American Society for Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago - two new drugs that target mutations [...]... Read more »
Melhem-Bertrandt A, Chavez-Macgregor M, Lei X, Brown EN, Lee RT, Meric-Bernstam F, Sood AK, Conzen SD, Hortobagyi GN, & Gonzalez-Angulo AM. (2011) Beta-Blocker Use Is Associated With Improved Relapse-Free Survival in Patients With Triple-Negative Breast Cancer. Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. PMID: 21632501
- June 9, 2011
- 11:56 AM
- 211 views
Sleep and the Male Sex Life
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
By Dianna Douglas
More research practically begging people to get a good night’s sleep has come out of the sleep labs at the University of Chicago. Eve Van Cauter and Rachel Leproult have discovered that a week of inadequate sleep means less testosterone in young men.
A lot less.
In the study, ten healthy young men gave blood [...]... Read more »
Leproult R, & Van Cauter E. (2011) Effect of 1 week of sleep restriction on testosterone levels in young healthy men. JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association, 305(21), 2173-4. PMID: 21632481
- June 9, 2011
- 11:56 AM
- 218 views
Sleep and the Male Sex Life
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
By Dianna Douglas
More research practically begging people to get a good night’s sleep has come out of the sleep labs at the University of Chicago. Eve Van Cauter and Rachel Leproult have discovered that a week of inadequate sleep means less testosterone in young men.
A lot less.
In the study, ten healthy young men gave blood [...]... Read more »
Leproult R, & Van Cauter E. (2011) Effect of 1 week of sleep restriction on testosterone levels in young healthy men. JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association, 305(21), 2173-4. PMID: 21632481
- June 7, 2011
- 11:24 AM
- 275 views
An Experimental Therapy from the “Bottom Up”
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
By John Easton
Are we flushing away cures? In the last few years, physicians have developed a new respect for what used to be considered waste. Led by a maverick Australian physician, many US doctors have begun to test the curative capacity, when appropriately acquired, prepared and administered, of human excrement.
For once, it’s not the [...]... Read more »
Kahn SA, Gorawara-Bhat R, & Rubin DT. (2011) Fecal bacteriotherapy for ulcerative colitis: Patients are ready, are we?. Inflammatory bowel diseases. PMID: 21618362
- June 6, 2011
- 03:24 PM
- 245 views
How to Recycle Cancer GWAS Data
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
In the 2000s, a new kind of genetic experiment was born: the genome-wide association study, or GWAS. If geneticists could recruit enough people with a particular disease and compare them to an equal number of disease-free controls, they believed GWAS would point the way to common gene variants associated with disease risk and novel biological [...]... Read more »
Pierce BL, Austin MA, & Ahsan H. (2011) Association study of type 2 diabetes genetic susceptibility variants and risk of pancreatic cancer: an analysis of PanScan-I data. Cancer causes , 22(6), 877-83. PMID: 21445555
Pierce BL, & Ahsan H. (2011) Genome-wide "Pleiotropy Scan" Identifies HNF1A Region as a Novel Pancreatic Cancer Susceptibility Locus. Cancer research. PMID: 21498636
- April 20, 2011
- 11:46 AM
- 564 views
The Influence of Healthy and Unhealthy Streets
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
It’s no big secret that one of the keys to good health is getting regular exercise. Yet good intentions are often thwarted by factors outside of one’s control. A person might decide to jog or bike several times a week, but if the neighborhood outside their door is not conducive to physical activity, it can [...]... Read more »
Hou, N., Popkin, B., Jacobs Jr., D., Song, Y., Guilkey, D., Lewis, C., & Gordon-Larsen, P. (2010) Longitudinal associations between neighborhood-level street network with walking, bicycling, and jogging: The CARDIA study. Health , 16(6), 1206-1215. DOI: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2010.08.005
- April 14, 2011
- 01:41 PM
- 534 views
One Foot in Front of the Other
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
There are few biological functions that we take for granted more than gait, the intricate symphony of motion that happens almost automatically when we walk or run. Gait is programmed deep into the nervous system of animals, an activity so robust that it is maintained even when large segments of brain are removed. Those crude, [...]... Read more »
Zhong, G., Sharma, K., & Harris-Warrick, R. (2011) Frequency-dependent recruitment of V2a interneurons during fictive locomotion in the mouse spinal cord. Nature Communications, 274. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1276
Crone SA, Zhong G, Harris-Warrick R, & Sharma K. (2009) In mice lacking V2a interneurons, gait depends on speed of locomotion. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 29(21), 7098-109. PMID: 19474336
McLean DL, Fan J, Higashijima S, Hale ME, & Fetcho JR. (2007) A topographic map of recruitment in spinal cord. Nature, 446(7131), 71-5. PMID: 17330042
- April 11, 2011
- 11:45 AM
- 546 views
The Genetics of Normal
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
In the 11 years since the blueprint of human life was decoded by the Human Genome Project, much of the focus has been on when those instructions fail. Scientists have used our newfound genetic knowledge to look for the roots of common and rare diseases, the gene or genes that can increase the risk of [...]... Read more »
Hamidovic, A., Dlugos, A., Skol, A., Palmer, A., & de Wit, H. (2009) Evaluation of genetic variability in the dopamine receptor D2 in relation to behavioral inhibition and impulsivity/sensation seeking: An exploratory study with d-amphetamine in healthy participants. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 17(6), 374-383. DOI: 10.1037/a0017840
- April 5, 2011
- 11:25 AM
- 553 views
Foretelling Drinking Future From a Buzz
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
Despite what beer commercials tell you, not everyone responds to alcohol in the same way. For some people, an alcoholic drink is a party-starter, increasing energy and sociability. For others, a drink can be a party-ender, producing feelings of fatigue and sluggishness. In pharmacological terms, alcohol is a mixed stimulant/depressant, able to produce a wide [...]... Read more »
King, A., de Wit, H., McNamara, P., & Cao, D. (2011) Rewarding, Stimulant, and Sedative Alcohol Responses and Relationship to Future Binge Drinking. Archives of General Psychiatry, 68(4), 389-399. DOI: 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.26
- April 4, 2011
- 01:04 PM
- 568 views
Treating Height as a Symptom
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
In taking care of sick patients, clinicians have two goals: treating the disease and treating the symptoms. In the case of an infection or a chronic illness, accomplishing this dual purpose is relatively straightforward. But what about when the symptom is something more complicated than pain or nausea? Some genetic disorders carry the consequence of [...]... Read more »
Cuttler L, & Rosenfield RL. (2011) Assessing the value of treatments to increase height. The New England journal of medicine, 364(13), 1274-6. PMID: 21449792
Ross JL, Quigley CA, Cao D, Feuillan P, Kowal K, Chipman JJ, & Cutler GB Jr. (2011) Growth hormone plus childhood low-dose estrogen in Turner's syndrome. The New England journal of medicine, 364(13), 1230-42. PMID: 21449786
- March 31, 2011
- 01:38 PM
- 454 views
A PSA about Inappropriate PSA Screening
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
There’s no denying that preventive medical screens do save lives, whether through mammograms, colonoscopies, or prostate exams. But for all the benefits, screening is not a one-size-fits-all practice. In the case of prostate cancer, mortality rates have declined by more than 30 percent in the last 20 years as testing levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) [...]... Read more »
Drazer, M., Huo, D., Schonberg, M., Razmaria, A., & Eggener, S. (2011) Population-Based Patterns and Predictors of Prostate-Specific Antigen Screening Among Older Men in the United States. Journal of Clinical Oncology. DOI: 10.1200/JCO.2010.31.9004
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