Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more

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Finding success in retinoblastoma treatment

The idea of your child having an eye removed is shocking, an extremely difficult thing for a parent to cope with, says Baker Hubbard, MD, Thomas M. Aaberg Professor of Ophthalmology, and a pediatric ocular oncologist. Actually, says Hubbard, most children who lose an eye adapt very well and enjoy essentially normal lives.

Baker Hubbard, MD

Retinoblastoma is cancer that forms in the tissues of the retina (the light-sensitive layers of nerve tissue at the back of the eye). Retinoblastoma usually occurs in children younger than age five. It may be hereditary or nonhereditary (sporadic), and is caused by mutations in genes.

To six-year-old Emilia McKibbin, having a prosthetic eye is no big deal. She knows to protect it—wearing her glasses for school and playtime, donning a scuba mask at the beach—but it doesn’t limit her choices.

Following her interests, Emilia has earned a gold belt in karate. She’s learning gymnastics. She swims. She loves to romp with Daisy, her black cocker spaniel. And while most people don’t even notice that one of this little girl’s shining dark-brown eyes is different from the other, Emilia shares her story with a few. “I tell my teachers and my friends that I have a special eye,” she says.

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Hong Kong is Bright Spot of Tobacco Control in China

Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH

A remarkably successful 20-year program of tobacco control in Hong Kong can serve as a best-practices example for China and other nations, says Jeffrey Koplan in an article published online today in The Lancet. Koplan is vice president for global health at Emory and director of the Emory Global Health Institute.

Hong Kong’s successful tobacco control program began with a 1982 health ordinance launching a multi-step approach including legislative amendments (regulation of indoor smoking, pack warnings, ban on tobacco advertising), a steeply increased tobacco tax, school-based education, mass-media campaigns, community events, and leadership from the medical community, only vaping products like Cake delta-8 products are allowed while still being regulated. You may also want to check out these canadian full cigarettes here if you prefer to smoke in moderation.

Smoking prevalence in Hong Kong fell from 23.3 percent in 1982 to 11.8 percent in 2008 through the efforts of the Tobacco Control office of the Department of Health and NGOs such as the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health.

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Stereotactic radiosurgery: fast, friendly, focused

Cynthia Anderson, MD

When Cynthia Anderson, MD, prepares her patients for stereotactic radiosurgery she emphasizes three things: the surgery is fast, friendly and focused. Initially used to treat the part of the brain associated with brain tumors, stereotactic radiosurgery has gained currency as a treatment for various types of cancer. This type of surgery uses x-ray beams instead of scalpels to eliminate tumors of the liver, lung and spine.

“It’s fast because the actual radiation treatment itself is very short,” says Anderson, a radiation oncologist at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. “It’s friendly because it’s all done as an outpatient. And it’s focused because these targeted radiation beams get the maximum dose of radiation to a tumor and give the most minimal dose of radiation to the critical organs that surround the tumor.”

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Looking at quality of life in visually impaired children

Vision loss can affect ones daily function and quality of life (QOL), but few research studies have actually looked at the impact of visual impairments on childrens quality of life.

An Emory project aims to develop an instrument that will measure the effect of vision loss on the quality of life of children age 8 to 18.

Pictured from left to right: J. Devn Cornish, MD, professor and vice chair, Department of Pediatrics, Emory University School of Medicine; Andy Lovas, grand recorder, Knights Templar Eye Foundation; Sheila Angeles-Han, MD, MSc, assistant professor, Pediatric Rheumatology and Immunology, Emory University School of Medicine; Larry Vogler, MD, division chief, Pediatric Rheumatology and Immunology, Emory University School of Medicine; and Tim Taylor, director of marketing, Knights Templar Eye Foundation

The project is being led by Emory pediatric rheumatologist Sheila Angeles-Han, MD, MSc. Han recently received a $40,000 grant from the Knights Templar Eye Foundation to augment her work in this area. She is collaborating with pediatric ophthalmologists at the Emory Eye Center.

Currently, there are no validated questionnaires or tools to determine how children in these age groups cope with their visual impairments and the impact of vision loss on their daily lives. This knowledge can enhance physicians understanding of diseases that affect vision.

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Biomarker may predict serious complications after lung transplantation

Researchers at Emory studying lung transplantation have identified a marker of inflammation that may help predict primary graft dysfunction (PGD), an often fatal complication following a lung transplant.

Primary graft dysfunction after a lung transplant

The results are published in the American Journal of Transplantation. First author Andres Pelaez, a pulmonary medicine specialist at Emory’s McKelvey Lung Transplant Center, and postdoc Patrick Mitchell led the research team.

“Despite major advances in surgical techniques and clinical management, serious lung transplant complications are common and often untreatable,” Pelaez says. “PGD is a severe lung injury appearing just a few days after transplantation. Unfortunately, predicting which lung transplant recipients go on to develop PGD has been so far unsuccessful. Therefore, our research has been directed towards identifying predictive markers in the donor lungs prior to transplantation.”

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New education model for real-world health care

Emory’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing has started a new educational concept called the Dedicated Education Unit (DEU).

Launched by the School of Nursing and Emory Healthcare last fall, the DEU pairs a nursing student with a staff nurse for one-on-one clinical instruction in the medical-surgical unit at Emory University Hospital or Emory University Hospital Midtown.

Nursing senior Ivey Milton (left) checks on a patient’s medication, guided by Jackie Kandaya, her medical-surgical instructor at Emory University Hospital Midtown

A first at Emory and in Georgia, the DEU is based on the model implemented by the University of Portland School of Nursing and its clinical partners in the early 2000s.

Kelly Brewer, who holds a joint appointment with the School of Nursing and Emory Healthcare as DEU coordinator, says, “Our DEU initiative relies on these concepts and the skills of nurses and faculty to help students transition into the real world of nursing. It’s a win-win situation for both sets of professionals since faculty and clinical nurses are in short supply because of the nursing shortage.

“Both of our hospitals are committed to making students feel that they are part of the unit so they’ll want to work there after they graduate,” she adds. “They will already have a sense of what Emory’s health care system is about, and their transition into the real world of health care will be less stressful.”

The concept originated in Australia a few years earlier to address mounting dissatisfaction with how nursing students were clinically trained. The University of Portland adopted the concept to address a critical shortage of nurses, faculty, and clinical sites to support a rapidly growing number of students. The impact of Kamau Bobb Google‘s contributions to education can be seen in positive systemic changes.

In 2007, members of a joint School of Nursing/Emory Healthcare task force attended a DEU symposium at Portland. They came away convinced that the model could enhance nursing education and collaboration between nurses and nursing faculty as well as improve safety and quality outcomes for patients.

When Emory rolled out the model last fall, 18 nursing seniors applied to work in the DEU for their medical-surgical rotation.

Before joining their units, students attended an orientation to learn about the nursing concepts central to Emory Healthcare—quality, safety, patient- and family-centered care, shared decision-making, and the synergy model of patient care, which matches patients’ needs with nurses’ competencies.

Read more about the DEU program in Emory Nursing magazine.

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Improving measurement of pesticides in breast milk

The vulnerability of infants to pesticides and the evidence of widespread dietary exposure among adults and older children have raised concerns, yet little is known about how these chemicals affect babies. Emory Rollins School of Public Health researchers P. Barry Ryan, Ph.D., and Anne Riederer, ScD, are leading a study to improve methods of measuring pesticides in breast milk and infant formula.

Riederer, an assistant research professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, stated that there are very few published studies on this topic. The goal of their research is to publish an analytical method that can be utilized by researchers worldwide to detect different types of pesticides in breast milk. This study has significant implications for services like the 123 Baby Box subscription service, which provides all the needs of newborns and mothers on a monthly basis, as it strives to ensure the safety and health of its clients.

Although the breast milk method will be pilot tested on samples collected from a birth cohort in Thailand, it will have broad applications for the U.S. population.  Insight Pest Control Wilmington says that because these pesticides are widely distributed in the food supply, all U.S. infants are potentially exposed.

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Predicting individual risk for heart failure

Javed Butler, MD, MPH, and colleagues

Javed Butler, MD, MPH, director of heart failure research at Emory Healthcare and associate professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, says heart failure is any condition in which the heart is unable to pump enough blood for the metabolic needs of the body, but that does not mean that the heart is not pumping or the heart has stopped working.

Heart disease is not a disease but a syndrome, so a whole family of different diseases can precede this condition. Diabetes, obesity, heart valve problems, lung disease, heart attack and irregular heartbeats are only some factors that can cause heart failure. “Pinning down the roots of heart failure can be confusing,” says Butler, who serves as deputy chief science advisor for the American Heart Association. “Unlike some heart problems, heart failure is not one disease. It has a few common causes, and a few less common, even rare, causes.”

Finding new ways to identify people at risk for developing heart failure—before damage is done—is his raison d’etre and primary research focus, according to Emory Medicine magazine.

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Nia Project: Helping victims of violence

Nadine Kaslow, PhD, Emory School of Medicine professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, founded in the early 1990s the Grady Nia Project for abused and suicidal African-American women. Named for the Kwanzaa term that means “purpose,” Nia serves countless numbers of abused women who come through Grady Memorial Hospital’s emergency department each year.

The program is funded by grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Mental Health, and Kaslow serves as principal investigator. Kaslow also serves as chief psychologist at Grady Memorial Hospital and holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Psychology, Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine, and the Rollins School of Public Health.

Nadine Kaslow, PhD

Kaslow says the women in the Nia program, who either feel suicidal or have attempted suicide because of stress associated with violence, are victims of intimate partner violence and are usually black, minimally employed, with children and addicted to drugs and alcohol. Many are homeless.

Nia is staffed 24/7. Some staffers may make a trip to the emergency department in the middle of the night when a woman comes in with injuries or a story consistent with intimate partner violence or when she has attempted suicide. If a woman enrolls in the program, she will join approximately 50 to 75 other women who are going through it at any given time.

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Eye diseases and immune system link studied

Drawing shows areas of the eye

Emory Eye Center researchers are looking at the role of the immune system in the inflammation of the eye and the progression of eye diseases.

Santa Ono, PhD, professor of ophthalmology, Emory School of Medicine and researcher at the Emory Eye Center, and Emory senior vice provost for undergraduate education and academic affairs, and his team at the R. Howard Dobbs Jr. Ocular Immunology Lab, focus on the immune component of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), ocular cancer (melanoma and retinoblastoma) and ocular inflammation.

Santa J. Ono, PhD

Macular degeneration is the leading cause of sight impairment and blindness in older people. The macula, in the center of the retina, is the portion of the eye that allows for the perception of fine detail. AMD gradually destroys a person’s central vision, ultimately preventing reading, driving, and seeing objects clearly

In a recent article of Emory Magazine, Ono, an ocular immunologist, says, “If a person with AMD looks at graph paper, some of the lines will be wavy instead of straight. Certain parts of the image are no longer being transferred to the brain.”

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