Health Sciences

The majority of women with cancer causing BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations experience sexual dysfunction, menopausal symptoms, cognitive and stress issues, and poor sleep following prophylactic removal of their Fallopian tubes and ovaries - a procedure known as risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy (RRSO) - according to results of a new study from the Abramson Canc

It’s almost axiomatic that misfolded proteins compromise how cells normally function and cause debilitating human disease, but how these proteins are detected and degraded within the body is not well understood.

Clinical practice guideline recommendations related to screening and treatment can change markedly over time as new evidence about best practices and clinical outcomes of various treatments emerges.

Puberty is the defining process of adolescent development, beginning a cascade of changes throughout the body, including the brain.

The Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation will fund three new initiatives in the second round of its  Innovation Grant Program. The program encourages Penn employees and students to submit their ideas for advancing health and health care delivery.

In the largest group of results to date, researchers from Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center and other institutions have shown in clinical trials that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) blocked autophagy in a host of aggressive cancers—glioblastoma, melanoma, lymphoma and myeloma, renal and colon cancers—and in some cases helped stabilize disea

The University of Pennsylvania’s Ruth Schwartz Cowan has been elected to the American Philosophical Society. She is professor emerita in the Department of History and Sociology of Science.

Nearly half of all adults in the United States suffer from the gum disease periodontitis, and 8.5 percent have a severe form that can raise the risk of heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and pregnancy complications.

Stimulation of a certain population of neurons within the brain can alter the learning process, according to a team of neuroscientists and neurosurgeons at the University of Pennsylvania. A report in the Journal of Neuroscience describes for the first time that human learning can be modified by stimulation of dopamine-containing neurons in a deep brain structure known as the substantia nigra.

The body’s innate immune system is a first line of defense, intent on sensing invading pathogens and wiping them out before they can cause harm. It should not be surprising then that bacteria have evolved many ways to specifically evade and overcome this sentry system in order to spread infection.