Health Sciences

The decision to initiate dialysis for acute kidney injury (AKI) varies depending on different patient factors and there is a lack of robust evidence as to which patients are likely to benefit most and why.

Early childhood caries involve a highly aggressive and painful form of tooth decay that frequently occurs in preschool children, especially those who come from backgrounds of poverty. The resulting decay can become so severe that treatment frequently requires surgery.

Most people appreciate that not getting enough sleep impairs cognitive performance. For the chronically sleep-deprived such as shift workers, students, or truckers, a common strategy is simply to catch up on missed slumber on the weekends. According to common wisdom, catch up sleep repays one's "sleep debt," with no lasting effects.

A new study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has found that the risk of hepatitis C-associated serious liver disease persists in HIV patients otherwise benefitting from antiretroviral therapy (ART) to treat HIV.

Babies are born with the ability to digest lactose, the sugar found in milk, but most humans lose this ability after infancy because of declining levels of the lactose-digesting enzyme lactase.

“Cell movement is the basic recipe of life, and all cells have the capacity to move,” says Roberto Dominguez, PhD, professor of Physiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.

People who try to quit smoking often say that kicking the habit makes the voice inside telling them to light up even louder, but why people succumb to those cravings so often has never been fully understood.  Now, a new brain imaging study in this week’s JAMA Psychiatry from scientists in Penn Medicine and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Intramural Research Program sh

In 2010, scientists in Italy reported that a woman and her daughter showed a puzzling array of disabilities, including epilepsy and cleft palate. The mother had previously lost a 15-day-old son to respiratory failure, and the research team noted that the mother and daughter were missing a large chunk of DNA on their X chromosome.

Destruction of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas is at the heart of type 1 and type 2 diabetes. “We are looking for ways to make new beta cells for these patients to one day replace daily insulin injections,” says Ben Stanger, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

WHO:            Henry Daniell                      Professor of Biochemistry and Pathology