Adventures from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Precision medicine, or personalized medicine, is a growing field that uses big data to treat the individual patient. It uses tools such as DNA sequencing and bioinformatics to ask, “What are the individual characteristics of my patient?” — for example, in her genetic makeup, environment or in the mutation profile of her tumor — and(...)
We confront challenges to our self-control every day. For those of us in the fields of science and medicine, the intense and fast-paced nature of our work only heightens the magnitude of these challenges. Do you leave early for happy hour or push through to finish setting up that last qPCR run? Do you break(...)
I was first offered the HPV vaccine during my college years. Although I had been counseled about the importance of the vaccine at that time, the steep price for the three-vaccine series kept me from getting it. With each injection costing $190, it was simply something I could not afford. By the time I started(...)
Last weekend, my husband and I visited our local pharmacy to pick up a prescription refill. The pharmacist chatted with us cheerfully as she rang us up at the cash register. Suddenly, her typing stopped. “Wow,” she finally said. “This is expensive.” The small pill bottle sat in her palm as she read off the(...)
Athletes engaging in sports often experience injuries to the muscles, tendons and ligaments. Due to frequent use, the shoulder, elbow, knee and ankle-joints are more susceptible to musculoskeletal soft tissue injuries than other joints. Musculoskeletal injuries account for about 30 percent of annual visits to primary physicians in the United States. Traditional treatments have included(...)
“You can match a blood transfusion to a blood type — that was an important discovery. What if matching a cancer cure to our genetic code was just as easy, just as standard? What if figuring out the right dose of medicine was as simple as taking our temperature?” President Obama posed these questions in(...)
During the last seven and a half years, President Barack Obama has been a reliable advocate for science and technology. Just recently, the Office of Science and Technology Policy released a report highlighting 100 achievements fostering research and promoting innovation during President Obama’s two terms. As the country prepares for a new president to take(...)
Many years ago when hunting and gathering was the means to survival, the ability to shore up vast amounts of caloric intake as body fat conferred an evolutionary advantage. The thinking goes that this adaptive mechanism of storing excess energy allowed some individuals to survive long enough during periods of food scarcity to pass on(...)
The U.S. Department of Labor has issued new rules on overtime wages, raising the yearly salary limit for which overtime pay must be provided to $47,476. This executive branch decision may have broad implications for academia among other industries as postdoctoral researchers were specifically identified as being affected by this ruling. Postdoctoral researchers typically perform(...)
After success in Swedish trials, the first uterine transplant was performed at Cleveland Clinic in the United States this past February. The research in Sweden had shown that these transplanted uteruses could carry babies and produce live births. The often troublesome side effects of having a uterus — namely painful or heavy periods, among other(...)