Recent recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) advising elimination of routine prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening for prostate cancer in healthy men are likely to encounter serious pushback from primary care physicians, according to results of a survey by Johns Hopkins investigators.

Johns Hopkins researchers say a program they developed that uses personal advocates and community networks to find organ donors for friends and loved ones who need kidney transplants resulted in success for nearly half of the participants in its trial run.

Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered a protein that appears to play an important regulatory role in deciding whether stem cells differentiate into the cells that make up the brain, as well as countless other tissues. This finding, published in the April Developmental Cell, could eventually shed light on developmental disorders as well as a variety of conditions that involve the generation of new neurons into adulthood, including depression, stroke, and posttraumatic stress disorder.

New nerve cells formed in a select part of the brain could hold considerable sway over how much you eat and consequently weigh, new animal research by Johns Hopkins scientists suggests in a study published in the May issue of Nature Neuroscience.

Mark E. Molliver, M.D., a professor emeritus of neuroscience and neurology in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine whose discoveries had a significant impact on analyzing the structure of the brain and its response to drugs; and whose skills as an influential teacher became legendary over a nearly half-century career, died on May 10 at The Johns Hopkins Hospital of complications following cardiac arrest. He was 75.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), long the master reference work in psychiatry, is seriously flawed and needs radical change from its current “field guide” form, according to an essay by two Johns Hopkins psychiatrists published in the May 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Even though hundreds of thousands more people finished grueling 26.2 mile marathons in the United States in 2009 compared to a decade earlier, a runner’s risk of dying during or soon after the race has remained very low — about .75 per 100,000, new Johns Hopkins research suggests. Men, however, were twice as likely to die as women.

On Friday, May 18, more than 750 Baltimore City students won’t be in science class at school. Instead, the throng of 5^th to 12^th graders will be immersed in a daylong program at the nation’s leading hospital designed to inspire them to pursue careers in health and science

Babies born to women with sensitivity to gluten appear to be at increased risk for certain psychiatric disorders later in life, according to research by scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore.

For more information: http://www.hopkinschildrens.org/Maternal-Antibodies-to-Gluten-Linked-to-Schizophrenia-Risk-in-Children.aspx

Paul Englund, a professor emeritus of biological chemistry, and Rachel Green and Se-Jin Lee, both professors of molecular biology and genetics, were among 82 scientists inducted April 28 into the National Academy of Sciences for their distinguished research achievements.

For additional information:
http://gazette.jhu.edu/2012/05/07/jhu-researchers-elected-to-national-academy-of-sciences/

Having a fat head may not be a bad thing, according to new findings at The Johns Hopkins University. As reported in the February 9 issue of Neuron, Hopkins researchers have made a significant discovery as to how adding fat molecules to proteins can influence the brain circuitry controlling cognitive function, including learning and memory.

Repairing DNA breaks can save a cell’s life—but shutting off the repair machinery can be just as critical. How cells accomplish this feat was unknown. However, new research by Johns Hopkins scientists, published in the February 22 issue of Nature, suggests that shutting down the repair machinery relies heavily on the same molecule used to start repair in the first place

A study on a handful of people with suspected mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD) suggests that a device that sends continuous electrical impulses to specific “memory” regions of the brain appears to increase neuronal activity. Results of the study using deep brain stimulation, a therapy already used in some patients with Parkinson’s disease and depression, may offer hope for at least some with AD, an intractable disease with no cure.

Eric B. Bass, M.D., M.P.H., a professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has been chosen to lead the nearly 3,400-member Society of General Internal Medicine.

Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that a protein that transports sodium, potassium and chloride may hold clues to how glioblastoma, the most common and deadliest type of brain cancer, moves and invades nearby healthy brain tissue.

Years of planning, construction and designing every detail of a magnificent, 1.6-million-square-foot hospital building finally came to fruition on May 1 when The Johns Hopkins Hospital officially opened the new facility. A carefully choreographed move of several hundred patients from the original Johns Hopkins Hospital into The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center and the Sheikh Zayed Tower took place on April 29 and 30, right before the official opening.

Stephanie Reel, Johns Hopkins University Vice Provost and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Information Technologies and Vice President and CIO of Information Services for Johns Hopkins Medicine, has been inducted into CIO Magazine’s CIO Hall of Fame. According to the magazine, this honor is bestowed on a select group of established IT executives and visionaries who have had a significant impact on the field of IT.

When Harvard University friends Sheryl Sandberg and Andrew M. Cameron, M.D., Ph.D., met up at their 20^th college reunion last spring, they got to talking. Sandberg knew that Cameron, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins, was passionate about solving the perennial problem of transplantation: the critical shortage of donated organs in the United States. And he knew that Sandberg, as chief operating officer of Facebook, had a way of easily reaching hundreds of millions of people.

A team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the National Human Genome Research Institute has evaluated the whole genomic sequence of stem cells derived from human bone marrow cells—so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells—and found that relatively few genetic changes occur during stem cell conversion by an improved method. The findings, reported in the March issue of Cell Stem Cell, the official journal of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), will be presented at the annual ISSCR meeting in June.