Johns Hopkins Medicine News

A Johns Hopkins study published 63 years ago will make an encore appearance in the July 16 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) as part of a year-long retrospective celebrating JAMA's 125th anniversary by revisiting papers that changed the course of modern-day medicine.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital has once again, for the 18th consecutive time, earned the top spot in U.S. News & World Report's annual rankings of American hospitals, placing first in three medical specialties and very high in 12 others.

A study of how pediatricians prescribe asthma medications suggests that while most would readily increase a child’s medication if needed, many are reluctant to taper off drug use when less might be best. A report on the study, led by Johns Hopkins Children’s Center researchers, appears in the July issue of Pediatrics.

In a follow-up to research showing that psilocybin, a substance contained in "sacred mushrooms," produces substantial spiritual effects, a Johns Hopkins team reports that those beneficial effects appear to last more than a year.

A small study in 18 patients assessing the effectiveness of the drug losartan for treating Marfan syndrome in children has yielded encouraging results. Reporting in the June 26 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Johns Hopkins researchers showed that losartan-a compound used for years to treat high blood pressure-slowed the enlargement of the aorta, the most life-threatening defect associated with Marfan syndrome.

The state Medical Examiner's Office cited cardiac arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythm, as the cause of sudden death of 19 year-old U.S. Naval Academy student Kristen Dickmann.

Johns Hopkins Children’s Center has received a nearly $5 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to establish a basic and translational research center that will consolidate research, treatment and care of adult and pediatric patients under one roof and speed up the translation of scientific discovery from bench to bedside. In addition, the center will offer counseling and education services to patients and their families.