A team of Johns Hopkins neuroscientists has worked out how some newly discovered light sensors in the eye detect light and communicate with the brain.

The hormone deprivation therapy that prostate cancer patients often take gives them only a temporary fix, with tumors usually regaining their hold within a couple of years. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered critical differences in the hormone receptors on prostate cancer cells in patients who no longer respond to this therapy.

When researchers look inside human cancer cells for the whereabouts of an important tumor-suppressor, they often catch the protein playing hooky, lolling around in cellular broth instead of muscling its way out to the cells’ membranes and foiling cancer growth. 

Despite increased emphasis on patient safety, little progress has been made in making hospitals safer, says Johns Hopkins critical care specialist Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., in an article in the Dec. 24 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The information on this page is provided by Johns Hopkins Medicine in response to an article on hospitals and uncompensated care published in The Baltimore Sun’s December 21, 2008 edition. Included is a statement for the news media, including a Question and Answer section and an explanation of the relationship between hospitals and the Health Services Cost Review Commission rate-setting system, as well as Johns Hopkins’s process for dealing with unpaid debt. Also included is a copy of a letter to employees and faculty of JHM from the president of The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have been awarded a $10.3 million grant—the largest basic immunology grant ever received by Hopkins—from the National Institutes of Health to dissect the human immune system. 

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have shown that brain damage was reduced by as much as 62.2 percent in mice who inhale low amounts of carbon monoxide after an induced stroke.

For Frank and Charmayne Dierker, breast cancer advocacy is a family affair.  The Chestertown, Md., couple have made a $1 million gift to establish The Frank and Charmayne Dierker Endowed Leadership Fund in Breast Cancer at Johns Hopkins.

Having discovered how a lowly, single-celled fungus regulates its version of cholesterol, Johns Hopkins researchers are gaining new insight about the target and action of cholesterol-lowering drugs taken daily by millions of people to stave off heart attacks and strokes. Their work appears in the December issue of Cell Metabolism.

To decipher how cancer develops, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center investigators say researchers must take a closer look at the packaging.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins have determined how the characteristic shedding of fatty substances, or lipids, by ovarian tumors allows the cancer to evade the body’s immune system, leaving the disease to spread unchecked. Ovarian cancer is considered to be one of the most aggressive malignancies, killing more than 70 percent of diagnosed women within five years, including an estimated 15,000 this year.

Johns Hopkins researchers have used fruit flies to gain new insights into a brain-damaging disorder afflicting children. Their work suggests a possible therapy for the disease, for which there is currently no treatment.

In a development that researchers say is likely to quell concerns about the value of costly computed tomography (CT) scans to diagnose coronary artery blockages, an international team led by researchers at Johns Hopkins reports solid evidence that the newer, more powerful 64-CT scans can easily and correctly identify people with major blood vessel disease and is nearly as accurate as invasive coronary angiography.

Lung disease experts at Johns Hopkins are calling for physicians to show much greater caution in prescribing inhaled corticosteroid drugs for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease after finding evidence that the widely used anti-inflammatory medications increase the risk of pneumonia by a full third.

Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that a drop in blood potassium levels caused by diuretics commonly prescribed for high blood pressure could be the reason why people on those drugs are at risk for developing type 2 diabetes. The drugs helpfully accelerate loss of fluids, but also deplete important chemicals, including potassium, so that those who take them are generally advised to eat bananas and other potassium-rich foods to counteract the effect.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and four other academic medical centers have been awarded a $9.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health to pin down inherited changes that occur outside a cell’s DNA sequence in people with schizophrenia. Unlike changes or mutations in the DNA sequence itself, epigenetic marks or alterations can be affected by a lifetime of exposure to the environment in which cells operate.

The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is awarding the Young Investigator Award to co-recipient Hongjun Song, Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, for his work in understanding how adult neural stem cells mature into nerve cells and integrate into the existing neuronal circuitry.

WHY ALLERGY MEDS WORSEN RESTLESS LEG SYNDROME

IT’S THE RATS KNEES: GRAPE POWDER ALLEVIATES JOINT INFLAMMATION

CURRY SPICE AND PARKINSON’S DISEASE?

Faculty, staff and patients at The Johns Hopkins Hospital will mark World AIDS Day with several events designed to highlight the need for continued community leadership in Baltimore to deal with the city’s soaring HIV rate. More than 16,000 Baltimoreans are infected with HIV, earning the city the dubious distinction of having the nation’s second highest rate of infection.

This is the first time Hopkins has co-hosted the annual meeting with UMB. Several Hopkins start-ups will be showcased and 15 new Hopkins faculty inventions will be featured, as well as several inventions from UMB. Experts from industry and academia will discuss the commercialization of new technology in a challenging economic environment.

A Johns Hopkins cardiologist well known for his studies on the links between depression and heart attack says there is not nearly enough evidence yet to support a recent call by the American Heart Association (AHA) to begin routine screening of millions of Americans for depression.

Heart experts at Johns Hopkins have evidence that life-saving coronary angioplasty at community hospitals is safer when physicians and hospital staff have more experience with the procedure.

American Society of Human Genetics 58th Annual Meeting

Naturally produced sex hormones may influence the risk and progression of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, Johns Hopkins researchers report in a recent study. The findings may help explain the increased risk men have of developing heart disease, which runs about twofold higher than women’s heart disease risk worldwide.

Taking a cue from the way drugs like Viagra put the biological brakes on a key enzyme involved in heart failure, scientists at Johns Hopkins have mapped out a key chemical step involved in blocking the enzyme.

A team of Johns Hopkins biochemists has identified a mixed bag of five key proteins out of thousands secreted into blood draining from the heart’s blood vessels that may together or in certain quantities form the basis of a far more accurate early warning test than currently in use of impending heart attack in people with severely reduced blood flow, or ischemia.

Outstanding researchers in cardiovascular medicine will be honored in The Johns Hopkins Hospital Houck Lobby at 4 p.m., Wednesday, Nov.5, as part of the Johns Hopkins Heart and Vascular Institute’s annual awards ceremony named to commemorate the late Hopkins physician Stanley L. Blumenthal, B.A. ’39 and M.D. ’43.

William G. Nelson, M.D., Ph.D., a member of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine faculty since 1992, has been selected to lead the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins.

Writing a prescription and cursory follow-up won’t help, researchers warn. A study among Baltimore inner-city teenage girls treated for pelvic inflammatory disease shows they are highly vulnerable to subsequent sexually transmitted infections (STI) — sometimes within a few weeks or months of their treatment.

A study of 113 children and teens physically victimized by peers concludes that one-on-one mentoring about how to safely avoid conflict and diffuse threats makes them far less likely to become victims again if guidance is initiated in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

A call to explore a broader use of HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccines and the validation of a simple oral screening test for HPV-caused oral cancers are reported in two studies by a Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center investigator.

Giving children with milk allergies increasingly higher doses of milk over time may ease, and even help them completely overcome, their allergic reactions, according to the results of a study led by the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and conducted jointly with Duke University. 

Janet Hardy, professor emerita of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins and an eminent pediatric epidemiologist whose pioneering work spanning six decades continues to influence modern-day neonatology and fetal medicine, died Oct. 23 at the age of 92 in Glen Arm, Md. 

Johns Hopkins researchers have found strong evidence supporting the view that the sleeping mind functions the same as the waking mind, a discovery that could significantly alter basic understanding of the normal and abnormal brain.

Striking another blow against childhood cancer and its devastating effects on families, Giant Food executives presented a $1 million check on October 21 to Johns Hopkins for pediatric leukemia research.

A Johns Hopkins medical student was chosen as one of 12 finalists to compete for a sizeable cash award and the prestige of being named the nation’s best collegiate inventor.

Anyone with a nose knows the rotten-egg odor of hydrogen sulfide, a gas generated by bacteria living in the human colon. Now an international team of scientists has discovered that cells inside the blood vessels of mice — as well as in people, no doubt — naturally make the gassy stuff, and that it controls blood pressure.

In a 10-year study of more than a thousand kidney failure patients, sudden cardiac death emerged as the number one cause of death for patients on dialysis, according to a Johns Hopkins researcher. The study, already published online and appearing in the Nov. 2 issue of Kidney International, identified systemic inflammatory response and malnutrition as key risk factors for the fatal heart attacks.

The Johns Hopkins Quality and Safety Research Group (QSRG), led by award-winning patient safety researcher Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., has received gifts worth more than $2 million to expand efforts to further reduce central line-associated bloodstream infections in hospital intensive care units. The philanthropic support comes through a matching fund gift from an anonymous donor and the Sandler Foundation of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund.

Johns Hopkins scientists were dubious in the early 1980s when they stumbled on small sugar molecules lurking in the centers of cells; not only were they not supposed to be there, but they certainly weren't supposed to be repeatedly attaching to and detaching from proteins, effectively switching them on and off. The conventional wisdom was that the job of turning proteins on and off -- and thus determining their actions -- fell to phosphates, in a common and easy-to-detect chemical step in which phosphates fasten to and unfasten from proteins; a process called phosphorylation.

In a disease like ALS - one that's always fatal and that has a long history of research-resistant biology - finding a proof of principle in animal models is significant.

The Department of Medicine will host a forum featuring official surrogates of Senators John McCain and Barack Obama at a special Grand Rounds. The format will include presentations representing each candidate’s position on health care issues and policies, including NIH funding for scientific research and ensuring fairness as it relates to indigent care and access.

Three Johns Hopkins University researchers have been elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine. Harry C. Dietz, M.D., Lisa A. Cooper, M.D., M.P.H., and Nancy Kass, D.S., are among 65 new members nationwide. Election to this prestigious body affirms their remarkable contributions to medical science, health care and public health, as well as to the education of generations of physicians. It is one of the highest honors for those in the biomedical profession.

An international effort led by physician-scientists at Johns Hopkins to control the global spread of HIV-related tuberculosis and treat the dual epidemics in hardest-hit countries has received $32 million in additional funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Institute of Medicine has awarded the 2008 Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Award in Mental Health to Paul R. McHugh, M.D., the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and professor of mental health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Johns Hopkins scientists report that high levels of a noxious gas from stoves can be added to the list of indoor pollutants that aggravate asthma symptoms of inner city children, especially preschoolers.

Working with genetically engineered mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins have shown that daily doses of a standardized extract from the leaves of the ginkgo tree can prevent or reduce brain damage after an induced stroke.

Existing recommendations for treating vitamin D deficiency in children with cystic fibrosis (CF) are too low to cover the serious need, leaving most at high risk for bone loss and rickets, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. 

John L. Cameron, M.D., Alfred Blalock Distinguished Service Professor of Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and for 19 years chief of surgery at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, will be installed as the 89th president of the American College of Surgeons on Oct. 12 during its annual meeting in San Francisco.

A critical care specialist at Johns Hopkins who has reviewed recent studies of intensive care unit (ICU) patients and data from The Johns Hopkins Hospital concludes that the routine use of deep sedation and bed rest in ICU patients may be causing unnecessary and long-term physical impairment and poor quality of life after hospital discharge.

Results of a multicenter study led by Johns Hopkins Children’s Center challenge the longstanding practice of treating premature babies with hydrocortisone, a steroid believed to fight inflammation and prevent lung disease. The researchers found that such treatment offers little or no benefit and that low cortisol levels are not even necessarily harmful. High cortisol levels, on the other hand, appeared to increase the risk of dangerous bleeding in the brain and require that babies be monitored aggressively to ward off life-threatening complications, according to the study published in the October issue of Pediatrics.

In what is believed to be the first formal “census” of neurological diseases and their impact, Johns Hopkins researchers have found that brain and nervous system infections are more difficult to diagnose and treat and have a remarkably higher rate of morbidity and mortality compared to other neurological problems.

A young child arrives at the emergency room after several days of abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea and is sent home with a diagnosis of viral gastritis and treatment for the symptoms. The child seems better for a while, only to return to the ER with worse symptoms and a ruptured appendix, a life-threatening complication of appendicitis.

Using computer models and live cell experiments, biomedical engineers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered more than 100 human protein fragments that can slow or stop the growth of cells that make up new blood vessels.

Patients' responses to a simple questionnaire can reliably predict whether they will adhere to physical therapy after spine surgery, Johns Hopkins researchers suggest in a new study. The findings could help physicians identify patients who might benefit from additional preoperative preparation to ensure they attend therapy sessions and follow through with prescribed exercise, a factor that can greatly affect their long-term recovery.

Carol Greider, Ph.D., Daniel Nathans Professor and director of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will share the 100,000 euro 2009 Paul Erlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize with Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Francisco for their “discovery of telomeres and telomerase and the elucidation of their significance for cell division and cell aging.”

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has awarded nearly $3 million for a contract aimed at reducing central line-associated bloodstream infections in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) to a consortium made up of Johns Hopkins and the Michigan Health & Hospital Association (MHA). The Health Research & Educational Trust, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association, will coordinate the three-year program as part of AHRQ's overall initiative to reduce health care-associated infections.

Natalia Bolotina, Ph.D., has joined the media relations team within Johns Hopkins Marketing and Communications division as the primary media representative for Johns Hopkins International, the global arm of Johns Hopkins Medicine.

The Johns Hopkins Health System is pleased to announce that it will receive a national equal opportunity employment award from the U.S. Department of Labor. This “Opportunity Award” will be presented at an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, October 16, 2008. It is the first time in the history of the award that a hospital will receive it.

Some Baltimore traditions just keep getting bigger and better. That's certainly the case with this year's Johns Hopkins Best Dressed Sale and Boutique 2008, now in it’s 41st year. Exclusive designer dresses and shoes, chic contemporary fashions, classic accessories and enduring vintage clothing will be on the racks, waiting for a favored place in the closets of bargain-conscious - but demanding - shoppers.

Caring Collection Goal to Hit $1 Million Help the Caring Collection, Inc. reach their goal this year to raise $1 million to donate to Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and other institutions to purchase and update cancer research equipment.

Johns Hopkins scientists who have spent decades researching the effects of caffeine report that a slew of caffeinated energy drinks now on the market should carry prominent labels that note caffeine doses and warn of potential health risks for consumers.

Two Johns Hopkins University professors — a physician who champions scientifically rigorous, common- sense approaches to improving patient safety and an astrophysicist who was a leader in the discovery of the universe's "dark energy" — were named today as winners of MacArthur Fellowships, the so-called "genius grants."

Baltimore Hyundai Dealers Present $40,000 Donation to Benefit Pediatric Oncology at Johns Hopkins

A heart expert at Johns Hopkins is calling for all women with a waistline measuring more than 35 inches to get an annual check-up and detailed risk assessment for heart problems because excess abdominal fat, even in the mildly obese and overweight, leads more than a third of women to underestimate their lifetime risk of having a heart attack, stroke or chest pain (angina.)

Two Johns Hopkins researchers—a physician whose squirrel hibernation studies may lead to new treatments for muscle-wasting diseases, and an engineer who is building medical tools smaller than a speck of dust—have received prestigious 2008 New Innovator Awards, the National Institutes of Health announced today.

Johns Hopkins investigators report the discovery of master controllers of a gene critical to human and all mammalian development by trawling, implausibly enough, through anonymous genetic sequences using tiny zebrafish embryos.

Weekly bouts of moderate aerobic exercise on a bike or treadmill, or a brisk walk, combined with some weightlifting, may cut down levels of fat in the liver by up to 40 percent in people with type 2 diabetes, a study by physical fitness experts at Johns Hopkins shows.

Brain scientists studying the molecular mechanisms of memory have earned a $1.5 million grant and the second consecutive designation for the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as a Silvio A. Conte Center for Neuroscience Research by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Gene activity in prostate cancer is reminiscent of that in the developing fetal prostate, providing further evidence that all cancers are not equal, Johns Hopkins researchers report. The finding could help scientists investigate how to manipulate the genetic program to fight a disease whose biology remains poorly understood despite more than half a century of investigation.

Johns Hopkins scientists report success in significantly suppressing levels of the “hunger hormone” ghrelin in pigs using a minimally invasive means of chemically vaporizing the main vessel carrying blood to the top section, or fundus, of the stomach. An estimated 90 percent of the body’s ghrelin originates in the fundus, which can’t make the hormone without a good blood supply.

arent-doctor discussions about whether to maintain or withdraw life support from terminally ill or severely premature newborns are so plagued by miscommunication and misunderstanding that they might as well be in different languages, according to a small but potentially instructive new study from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center reported in the September issue of Pediatrics. 

More than 20 world-renowned scientists and industry leaders presenting the current state of neurobiology research and discussing challenges of speeding drug discovery for brain diseases to an audience of more than 200 research scientists, leaders in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, business development executives, venture capitalists, investment bankers, and consulting and legal service providers.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine report in the July issue of Neuron how nerve cells in the brain ensure that Arc, a protein critical for memory formation, is made instantly after nerve stimulation. Paradoxically, its manufacture involves two other proteins - including one linked to mental retardation - that typically prevent proteins from being made.

Jeremy Nathans, M.D., Ph.D., professor of molecular biology and genetics and ophthalmology, and King-Wai Yau, Ph.D., professor of neuroscience and ophthalmology, have been awarded the 2008 António Champalimaud Vision Award by the Champalimaud Foundation in Portugal for their “ground-breaking discoveries in the laboratory that enhance our knowledge and understanding of vision.”

The Johns Hopkins researchers who last year discovered a genetic cause of the inherited from of a deadly lung disease have now identified the same underlying cause in a majority of patients with the disease.

The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) has reported results from its first comprehensive study which focused on the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma.

Virtually all cancers arise through mutation of genes that control cell growth.  As the cancers grow, they shed fragments of DNA, biological evidence of these mutant genes, into the bloodstream. Now, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers have developed a novel test to measure tumor-derived DNA in the bloodstream.

The complete genetic blueprint for lethal pancreatic cancer and brain cancer was deciphered by a team at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. The studies, led by the same group who completed maps of the breast cancer and colorectal cancer genomes in 2007, are reported in two articles in the Sept. 5, 2008, issue of Science Express.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have been awarded a $10 million "Roadmap" grant by the National Institute of Mental Health branch of the National Institutes of Health to establish the new Ion Channel Center and work with researchers around the country to identify molecular probes that can bind and regulate the tiny protein channels that allow small nutrients into and out of cells.

Jeff W.M. Bulte, Ph.D., professor of radiology, biomedical engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering in the Johns Hopkins Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, is one of 38 U.S. scientists to win one of the National Institutes of Health new EUREKA (for Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration) grants.

With close monitoring and a few standard precautions, nearly all children with known or suspected vaccine allergies can be safely immunized, according to a team of vaccine safety experts led by the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Writing in the September issue of Pediatrics, the multicenter research team offers pediatricians a step-by-step tool for quickly identifying children with allergic reactions to vaccines, and a much-needed guide, they say, to safely immunize those who are allergic. 

Reporting this week in the Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have uncovered for the first time molecular circuitry associated with schizophrenia that links three previously known, yet unrelated proteins.

Young adults without a family history of bowel disease are unlikely to develop adenomas, the colorectal polyps most likely to lead to cancer, according to new research directed by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. The finding supports current cancer screening guidelines recommending adults in general undergo screening colonoscopies starting at age 50.

A Johns Hopkins research team reports it may have an explanation for at least some of the higher organ rejection rates seen among black - as compared to white - kidney transplant recipients.

Steve Cho, M.D., assistant professor in the division of nuclear medicine at the Johns Hopkins Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, is one of 19 scientists to earn a 2008 Young Investigator Award from the Prostate Cancer Foundation. The awards, designed to encourage careers in prostate disease research, carries a stipend of $75,000 a year for three years, with matching amounts from an investigator's institution.

Johns Hopkins HealthCare LLC (JHHC) has earned accreditation from the Utilization Review Accreditation Commission (URAC), a Washington, D.C.-based organization that establishes standards for the health care industry covering network management, provider credentialing, utilization management, quality improvement and consumer protection.

People who walk on a treadmill even years after stroke damage can significantly improve their health and mobility, changes that reflect actual "rewiring" of their brains, according to research spearheaded at Johns Hopkins.

Having discovered a genetic trigger for age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in people over 50, researchers report that an experimental state-of-the-art therapy for treating eye disease could adversely affect the vision of some patients with the "wrong" genetic makeup.

Elevated cholesterol levels return to normal or near normal levels over time in four out of 10 children with uncontrollable epilepsy treated with the high-fat ketogenic diet, according to results of a Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study reported in the Journal of Child Neurology. The study appears online ahead of print.

Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Mexican Society of Neurosurgery co-hosted a day-long conference on brain tumor management in Mexico this month, an unusual joint venture the planners hope will be a model for continuing medical education programs covering a wide range of medical specialties in that country.

Platelets - those tiny, unassuming cells that cause blood to clot and scabs to form when you cut yourself - play an important early role in promoting cerebral malaria, an often lethal complication that occurs mostly in children. Affecting as many as half a billion people in tropical and subtropical regions, malaria is one of the oldest recorded diseases and the parasite responsible for it, Plasmodium, among the most studied pathogens of all time. Still, cerebral malaria, which results from a combination of blood vessel and immune system dysfunction, is not well understood.

AIDS experts at Johns Hopkins say they have compelling evidence that some people with HIV who for years and even decades show extremely low levels of the virus in their blood never progress to full-blown AIDS and remain symptom free even without treatment, probably do so because of the strength of their immune systems, not any defects in the strain of HIV that infected them in the first place.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins are reporting what is believed to be the most conclusive evidence to date that inadequate levels of vitamin D, obtained from milk, fortified cereals and exposure to sunlight, lead to substantially increased risk of death.

A Johns Hopkins expert in HIV and how the AIDS virus hides in the body says antiretroviral drugs have stopped HIV from replicating, the first of three key steps needed to rid people of the virus.

Cells rely on calcium as a universal means of communication. For example, a sudden rush of calcium can trigger nerve cells to convey thoughts in the brain or cause a heart cell to beat. A longstanding mystery has been how cells and molecules manage to appropriately sense and respond to the variety of calcium fluctuations within cells.

A blood test currently used as the gold standard for monitoring people already under care for diabetes may have far wider use in identifying millions with undetected diabetes, a team led by a Johns Hopkins physician suggests.

Extreme heat or cold is not only uncomfortable, it can be deadly-causing proteins to unravel and malfunction.

The National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) has reappointed two scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to help lead nationwide research teams focused on the mental and cardiovascular risks associated with long-term spaceflight.

Family, friends and neighbors remember Lisa Sandler Spaeth as an active mother of two in Potomac, Md., with a lot on the go, juggling her son’s baseball games and her daughter’s horseback-riding lessons with numerous committee obligations, organizing women’s activities at her local synagogue.

Contrary to prevailing assumptions, Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that kidneys recovered from black donors who died from cardiac death offer the best survival rate for black recipients of a deceased-donor kidney.

Victor Almon McKusick, M.D., University Professor of Medical Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, one of the two distinguished Johns Hopkins geneticists for whom the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine was named, and a towering international figure in genetics research, diagnosis and treatment, died Tuesday, July 22 at home. He was 86.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that the Notch protein helps human embryonic stem cells "decide" their own fate, a finding which may eventually be useful in programming cells for the development of stem cell therapies. Their results are reported in the May 2008 issue of Cell Stem Cell.

Mice with inflamed nasal tissue being tested at a Johns Hopkins laboratory may be unable to tell if something smells bad or good, but their sensory deficit is nothing to turn up a nose at.

The American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) has awarded The Johns Hopkins Hospital its prestigious Magnet Recognition status for excellence in nursing services.

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.

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.

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

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it appears that while the overall health of our genomes is indeed inherited from our parents, chemical marks on our genomes’ DNA sequences actually change as we age, driving increased risk of disease susceptibility for us and similarly for our close family members.

Hopkins scientists and youngsters from Ft. Worthington Elementary, Dr. Rayner Browne Elementary, Dr. Bernard Harris, Sr. Elementary, William A. Paca Elementary, Harford Heights Intermediate and Tench Tilghman Elementary schools

Men whose tumors recur after prostate cancer surgery are three times more likely to survive their disease long term if they undergo radiotherapy within two years of the recurrence. Surprisingly, survival benefits were best in men whose new tumors were growing fastest, according to results of a "look-back" study of 635 men by Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions researchers reported June 18 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Uncertainties about proper use and possible long-term effects of hydroxyurea in the treatment of sickle cell anemia may be wrongly influencing doctors to avoid prescribing it to those in serious need, according to results of a literature review by specialists at Johns Hopkins.

Researchers have long known that type-2 diabetes and depression oftengo hand in hand. However, it's been unclear which condition developsfirst in patients who end up with both. Now, a new study led by JohnsHopkins doctors suggests that this chicken-and-egg problem has a dualanswer: Patients with depression have an increased risk of developingtype-2 diabetes, and patients with type-2 diabetes have an increasedrisk of developing depression.

A zebra's stripes, a seashell's spirals, a butterfly's wings: these are all examples of patterns in nature. The formation of patterns is a puzzle for mathematicians and biologists alike. How does the delicate design of a butterfly's wings come from a single fertilized egg? How does pattern emerge out of no pattern?

A team of AIDS experts at Johns Hopkins has found a simple mathematical equation that accurately explains how well each of 25 anti-HIV drugs in five commonly used drug groups suppresses the virus and keeps the disease in check.

Every year, about 500 million people worldwide are infected with the parasite that causes dysentery, a global medical burden that among infectious diseases is second only to malaria. In a new study appearing in the June 15 issue of Genes and Development, Johns Hopkins researchers may have found a way to ease this burden by discovering a new enzyme that may help the dysentery-causing amoeba evade the immune system.

Cell biologists at Johns Hopkins have discovered how tiny molecular motors within cells work together with other structural players to coordinate critical cell shape changes that accompany cell division.

A short-term, very-high dose regimen of the immune-suppressing drug cyclophosphamide seems to slow progression of multiple sclerosis (MS) in most of a small group of patients studied and may even restore neurological function lost to the disease, Johns Hopkins researchers report. The findings in nine people, most of whom had failed all other treatments, suggest new ways to treat a disease that tends to progress relentlessly.

Johns Hopkins Magazine (April 2008) features Lillie Shockney.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have established a human cell-based system for studying sickle cell anemia by reprogramming somatic cells to an embryonic stem cell like state. Publishing online in Stem Cells on May 29, the team describes a faster and more efficient method of reprogramming cells that might speed the development of stem cell therapies.

Duojia Pan, Ph.D., a professor of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is one of 56 new members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Combined, the new class of investigators will receive more than $600 million in research funding.

Peter Beilenson, M.D., M.P.H., health officer for Howard County and former Baltimore City health commissioner is the guest speaker at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s 113th diploma award ceremony on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 2:30 p.m. at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.

Heart patients often experience lasting problems with memory, language, and other cognitive skills after bypass surgery. However, these problems aren’t caused by the surgery itself or the pump used to replace heart function during surgery, a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests. The findings may lead to better approaches to prevent cognitive decline regardless of which treatment heart disease patients receive.

Johns Hopkins Medicine’s top leadership team will replace their Blackberries, cell phones and pens on Friday morning with hammers, saws and paint brushes to help put finishing touches on a formerly empty and dilapidated East Baltimore row house. As part of the Habitat for Humanity program, the newly restored house will become home to a low-income family. The proud owner of the new house will be working along side Hopkins officials to complete the renovation.

Volunteer heart experts at Johns Hopkins have embarked on what is believed to be the largest single-day event to date to screen young athletes in the United States for early signs of life-threatening defects in the body’s blood-pumping organ.

It’s a recurrent summer-time scenario in the pediatric emergency room and doctors from Johns Hopkins Children’s are sounding the alarm on it: An otherwise healthy infant is brought in by panicked parents after suffering a seizure, which turns out to be caused by drinking too much water.

A multicenter study led by Johns Hopkins doctors has fine-tuned the dosage and timing for administering clot-busting tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) to patients with strokes caused by bleeding within the brain. The treatment, as reported this week at the European Stroke Conference in Nice, France, has been shown to dramatically decrease death and disability in patients with this typically lethal subset of stroke.

A pricy drug used to treat a rare but well-known genetic disorder may hold wider promise as a treatment for millions of Americans with potentially lethal enlarged hearts, due mainly to high blood pressure, a study from Johns Hopkins shows.

Progress in patient safety research could slow to a crawl unless regulators work out a host of ethical issues, Johns Hopkins researchers assert in an upcoming opinion piece.

Neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins are a step closer to understanding pain sensitivity - specifically why it’s variable instead of constant - having identified a gene that regulates a heat-activated molecular sensor.

Neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins have discovered that mice lacking an enzyme that contributes to Alzheimer disease exhibit a number of schizophrenia-like behaviors. The finding raises the possibility that this enzyme may participate in the development of schizophrenia and related psychiatric disorders and therefore may provide a new target for developing therapies.

The developing nervous system makes far more nerve cells than are needed to ensure target organs and tissues are properly connected to the nervous system. As nerves connect to target organs, they somehow compete with each other resulting in some living and some dying. Now, using a combination of computer modeling and molecular biology, neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins have discovered how the target tissue helps newly connected peripheral nerve cells strengthen their connections and kill neighboring nerves. The study was published in the April 18th issue of Science.

Elizabeth A. Hunt, M.D., a clinical fellow in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Redonda G. Miller, M.D., assistant professor of medicine and assistant dean for student affairs, and Stephanie L. Reel, chief information officer for the Johns Hopkins University and Health System, have been named as three of Maryland’s Top 100 Women by the Daily Record business paper.

Heart specialists at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere report what is believed to be the first wide-scale evidence linking severe overweight to prolonged inflammation of heart tissue and the subsequent damage leading to failure of the body’s blood-pumping organ.

• DRUG THERAPY MORE EFFECTIVE THAN STANDARD TREATMENT IN FIGHT AGAINST DIABETES RETINAL SWELLING
• PROMISING TREATMENT FOR RETINAL THICKENING

Peter J. Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., a practicing anesthesiologist and critical care physician at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an internationally prominent patient safety researcher and advocate has been named one of the world’s "most influential people" of 2008 by Time Magazine.

Careful analysis of microscopic abrasions on the teeth of early human "cousins" by resesarchers at Johns Hopkins, University of Arkansas, Cambridge University and Stony Brook University show that although equipped with thick enamel, large jaws and powerful chewing muscles, this ancient species may not have eaten the nuts, seeds or roots their anatomy suggests. Instead, the tooth wear suggests a more general diet, as reported in next week's Public Library of Science One.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins have outlined a new path for potential therapies to combat inflammation associated with sinusitis and asthma based on a new understanding of the body’s earliest immune response in the nose and sinus cavities.

Gregg L. Semenza, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of pediatrics at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Jane I. Guyer, Ph.D., a professor of anthropology at The Johns Hopkins University were elected as members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for their excellence in original scientific research.  Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. Semenza and Guyer will be inducted into the Academy next April during its 146th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Even when their blood pressure is kept strictly under control with the best available medicine, African-American patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) continue to lose their kidney function over time, research led by a Johns Hopkins team shows. The finding suggests that treating CKD in this population may be vastly more complex than researchers had previously thought, with blood pressure control being only one piece of the therapeutic puzzle.

President George W. Bush met with patients, doctors and nurses who participated in the ground-breaking, twelve-patient “domino” kidney transplant in the Oval Office of the White House on April 23. Aside from being what is believed to be to first-ever simultaneous paired donation transplant of six kidneys, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolton’s brother, Randall Bolton, was one of the patients.

On average, two Marylanders each day are diagnosed with potentially fatal oral cancers that are often curable if identified and treated early.  The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Office of Oral Health reports that the state ranks in the country’s top 10 for number of deaths caused by oral cancers.  Nationally, statistics show that the death rate from these cancers is higher than those of cervical cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma, testicular cancer, and thyroid and malignant melanoma.

Edbert Hsu, M.D., M.P.H., an emergency medicine physician at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has received the American Medical Association (AMA) Foundation’s 2008 Leadership Award. This award provides medical students, residents/fellows, early career physicians and established physicians from around the country with special training to develop their skills as future leaders in organized medicine and community affairs.

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine will hold its 22nd annual Mood Disorders Symposium, focused this year on depression and bipolar illness among women and teenagers, at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, April 15. The symposium is to be held in the Thomas B. Turner Building, 720 Rutland Ave. on the Johns Hopkins medical campus.

The following summaries are based on abstracts scheduled for presentation at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting, April 12 - 16 in San Diego, CA.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that blood vessels in the head can guide growing facial nerve cells with blood pressure controlling proteins. The findings, which suggest that blood vessels throughout the body might have the same power of persuasion over many nerves, are published this week in Nature.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have uncovered the molecular underpinnings of one of the earliest steps in human development using human embryonic stem cells. Their identification of a critical signal mediated by the protein BMP-4 that drives the differentiation of stem cells into what will become the placenta, will be published in the April issue of Cell Stem Cell.

Surgical teams at Johns Hopkins performed what is believed to be the first six-way donor kidney swap among 12 individuals Saturday, April 5. The 10-hour surgeries used six operation rooms and occupied nine surgical teams at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Unless a researcher has stock ownership in a company whose drug is being tested,  telling potential research volunteers about an investigator’s financial interests is unlikely to affect their willingness to volunteer, a new study shows.

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has established a formal educational agreement with the University of Patras, the third largest university in Greece, to collaborate on research and student and faculty exchanges.

The 31st annual Young Investigators’ Day celebration at Johns Hopkins will highlight discoveries from how cells sense oxygen to how nerve cells grow and develop. Twelve students and six fellows will receive awards, and all young investigators at the School of Medicine will be celebrated.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins, as part of a large, multi-institutional study, have found one gene variant that is linked to an increased risk of lung cancer.

In what could be a landmark, federally funded study, a team of scientists and a national team of  researchers have shown that transplantation of corneas from older donors have rates of success similar to those from younger donors.

The Dean of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine thanks faculty and staff for helping maintain the School of Medicine’s position as #2 in U.S. News & World Report’s 2009 edition of its publication ranking the nation’s accredited medical schools.

A medical student places a chest tube in a patient lying on an operating table, while another student conducts a colonoscopy. Everything is just as it would be in a real OR or treatment room, except that the patients won’t be harmed or complain if mistakes are made – they’re robots.

Long known for its role in preventing anemia in expectant mothers and spinal birth defects in newborns, the B vitamin folate, found in leafy green vegetables, beans and nuts has now been shown to blunt the damaging effects of heart attack when given in short-term, high doses to test animals.

What is believed to be the largest study of its kind for the genetic roots of inflammatory bowel diseases has suggested new links to Crohn’s Disease as well as further evidence that some people of Jewish descent are more likely to develop it.

One day last spring, fossil hunter and anatomy professor Kenneth Rose, Ph.D. was displaying the bones of a jackrabbit’s foot as part of a seminar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine when something about the shape of the bones looked oddly familiar.

Kidney damage often sets off a slew of complications in patients, spreading organ failure like wildfire throughout their bodies. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins say they have evidence in mice that this deadly progression-at least to the lungs-may be due to genetic alterations in kidney-based genes that sabotage inflammation control and send toxic signals to healthy organs. The signals convince these organs to react as if they, too, are damaged.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have uncovered clearly recognizable genetic alterations in tumors and tissue removed from patients with early-stage lung cancers that look like good predictors of which of these cancers are more likely to recur.

"Play Ball!" will soon be heard in major league baseball parks across the country. It may also signal renewed controversy over Major League Baseball's Mitchell Report on the use by professional athletes of such banned substances as anabolic steroids and human growth hormone (HGH).

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have teased out two distinct sets of risk factors for head and neck cancers, suggesting that there are two completely different kinds of the disease.

Individuals are less likely to regain lost weight when they get monthly tips straight from trained counselors rather than from a weight-loss Web site, according to results of a study by Johns Hopkins and other researchers.

Inviting researchers to attend institutional review board sessions designed to approve these same investigators’ requests to conduct research involving human subjects doesn’t seem to affect the efficiency of the process one way or the other, a new study led by Johns Hopkins bioethicists suggests.

Second year medical students at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine will participate in a drill simulating what would occur at hospitals during a pandemic flu outbreak.

Edward D. Miller, M.D., Dean of the Medical Faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine, will testify before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Tuesday, March 11, at 11 a.m. in the Dirksen Room 430 on the growing risks to American medical research resulting from continued flat funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Second-grader Gavin loves to collect and study rocks and minerals. He hopes to be a geologist one day. Six-year-old Aaliyah loves to dance and sing along to her favorite Beyonce songs. Michael is in fourth grade and enjoys playing video games but hopes to soon get back to playing his favorite sports, football and basketball. And 10-year-old Justin dreams of becoming a left-handed pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that two clinically different inherited syndromes are in fact variations of the same disorder. Reporting in the April issue of Nature Genetics, the team suggests that at least for this class of disorders, the total number and "strength" of genetic alterations an individual carries throughout the genome can generate a range of symptoms wide enough to appear like different conditions.

Using pacemakers to electrically retune a heart damaged by long bouts of a wobbling heartbeat, where one heart muscle wall is beating sooner than the other, leads to fast improvements in the tissue levels of more than a dozen proteins key to the organ’s health, scientists at Johns Hopkins report in experiments in dogs.

Patients cared for by hospitals with residents in training have a 17 percent less chance of dying after lung cancer surgery compared with patients undergoing surgery at non-teaching hospitals, according to results of a Johns Hopkins study published in the March issue of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

Patients cared for by hospitals with residents in training have a 17 percent less chance of dying after lung cancer surgery compared with patients undergoing surgery at non-teaching hospitals, according to results of a Johns Hopkins study published in the March issue of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

Johns Hopkins cardiologist and physician in chief Myron "Mike" Weisfeldt, M.D., has been named the recipient of the 2008 Diversity Award by the Association of Professors of Medicine, an organization whose members come from across the United States and Canada. The award will be presented to Weisfeldt at a luncheon on Feb. 28 during the association’s annual meeting in Miami, Fla.

A pair of Johns Hopkins and government scientists have discovered that when jazz musicians improvise, their brains turn off areas linked to self-censoring and inhibition, and turn on those that let self-expression flow

The mothers of some autistic children may have made antibodies against their fetuses’ brain tissue during pregnancy that crossed the placenta and caused changes that led to autism, suggests research led by Johns Hopkins Children’s Center investigators and published in the February issue of the Journal of Neuroimmunology.

Johns Hopkins scientist Charles Drake is testing a unique molecule for its ability to awaken the immune system’s ability to recognize and destroy prostate cancer cells.  This molecule is a key protein that acts as a sleep-aid to soldiering immune cells.

A new full-service patient care and clinical research center for people with a relatively rare and disabling brain disorder will be launched at Johns Hopkins with initial support from a $450,000 National Ataxia Foundation (NAF) grant funded by the Gordon and Marilyn Macklin Foundation. Gordon and Marilyn Macklin were members of the Chesapeake Chapter of the National Ataxia Foundation, which was instrumental in the development and funding of the center.

By solving the 3-D structure of one particular enzyme that controls genes, researchers at Johns Hopkins, working with colleagues at University of Pennsylvania and the Wistar Institute, have discovered how the enzyme adds chemical groups to chromosomes to alter gene function. The research team reports in this week’s Nature that the new structure paves the way for developing new chemical inhibitors and therapies for diseases like cancer.

Johns Hopkins researchers from the Whiting School of Engineering and the School of Medicine have devised a micro-scale tool - a lab on a chip - designed to mimic the chemical complexities of the brain. The system should help scientists better understand how nerve cells in the brain work together to form the nervous system.

Staging mock cardiac and respiratory arrests – “code” situations in hospital parlance – easily expose common failures in rapid response with CPR and other life-saving care for children  and also set up powerful incentives to sharpen emergency skills and move fast to use them, suggests a study from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

A researcher at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Genetic Medicine has led the effort to compile to date the largest free resource of experimental information about human proteins. Reporting in the February issue of Nature Biotechnology, the research team describes how all researchers around the world can access this data and speed their own research.

An antiretroviral drug already in widespread use in the developing world to prevent the transmission of HIV from infected mothers to their newborns during childbirth has also been found to substantially cut the risk of subsequent HIV transmission during breast-feeding.

A new urgent care center specifically geared to treat sickle cell patients experiencing acute pain will open Feb. 5, physicians at Johns Hopkins Medicine announced. A formal opening celebration is scheduled for Feb. 18.

Findings contradict recently lowered government standard
Heart surgeons at Johns Hopkins have evidence to support further tightening rather than easing of standards used to designate hospitals that are best at performing heart transplants.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered the first genetic evidence that secondhand smoke can worsen lung disease. The report in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association describes one gene variation that can weaken lung function as well as shorten the lifespan of those affected by cystic fibrosis and also are exposed to secondhand smoke.

An estimated one in 20 patients undergoing a common operation to boost blood supply to the heart and to ward off repeat heart attacks may do better if their surgeons also remold the heart to a near normal size, by cutting and suturing together stretched muscle and scar tissue resulting from the initial attack, according to cardiac surgeons at Johns Hopkins.

A modified version of a popular high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet can significantly cut the number of seizures in adults with epilepsy, a study led by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests.  The Atkins-like diet, which has shown promise for seizure control in children, may offer a new lifeline for patients when drugs and other treatments fail or cause complications.

Research by a group of scientists studying the effects of heavy marijuana use suggests that withdrawal from the use of marijuana is similar to what is experienced by people when they quit smoking cigarettes. Abstinence from each of these drugs appears to cause several common symptoms, such as irritability, anger and trouble sleeping - based on self reporting in a recent study of 12 heavy users of both marijuana and cigarettes.

Wes Blakeslee, J.D., executive director of technology transfer at The Johns Hopkins University, has been named to the 2008 Maryland SuperLawyers list by Super Lawyers magazine, a national publication.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have identified a common genetic alteration that appears to be associated with autism only when inherited by sons from their mother. The CNTNAP2 gene, also identified by two other groups publishing jointly in the January issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics, is one of the strongest common genetic links to autism susceptibility found to date.

Researchers at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine (IGM) at Johns Hopkins will join other national and international scientists in the 1000 Genomes Project, an ambitious effort that will involve sequencing the genomes of numerous people from around the world to create the most detailed and medically useful picture to date of human genetic variation.

Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered a previously unsuspected mechanism of cell death that may afford a new way to find and develop stronger yet less-harmful anticancer drugs. Specifically, they have found that a cellular stress-response protein prevents cells from dying by interacting with a particular signaling protein and mediating its response to some conventional anticancer drugs. The results appear in last week’s Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered a window in kidney growth that affects the onset of polycystic kidney disease and can mean, in mice, the difference between developing severe cystic disease early in adolescence or late in adulthood.

Findings from what is believed to be the largest comparison of blood samples collected from healthy individuals and people with schizophrenia suggest that infection with the common Toxoplasma gondii parasite, carried by cats and farm animals, may increase the risk of schizophrenia.

Victor A. McKusick, M.D., University Professor of Medical Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is the 2008 recipient of the prestigious Japan Prize in Medical Genetics and Genomics, the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan announced today in Tokyo.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Brady Urological Institute, Wake Forest University and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have identified an array of gene markers for hereditary prostate cancer that, along with family history for the disease, appear to raise risk to more than nine times that of men without such markers.  The panel, gleaned from a study of more than 4,000 Swedes, found that these markers are common and could account for nearly half of the prostate cancer cases in this study.  Results are published online in the Jan. 16 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Gina Szymanski, M.S., R.N., nurse manager at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, has received the Linda Arenth Excellence in Cancer Nursing Management Award from the Oncology Nursing Society.

Research linking HPV to head and neck cancers was identified by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) as one among six advances deemed most significant in clinical cancer research for 2007. 

William Stewart Halsted, The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s first surgeon in chief, is widely credited as the first to develop and introduce rubber surgical gloves in the United States. That was in 1894, five years after the institution opened.

More than three decades after the shutdown of the notorious Tuskegee study, a team of Johns Hopkins physicians has found that Tuskegee’s legacy of blacks’ mistrust of physicians and deep-seated fear of harm from medical research persists and is largely to blame for keeping much-needed African Americans from taking part in clinical trials.

New ways to make sure people are adequately informed about the risks and benefits of taking part in a clinical trial can be field-tested for effectiveness as rigorously as new medical treatments themselves, a study led by a Johns Hopkins bioethicist suggests.

Johns Hopkins Medicine is hosting its first Palm Beach area symposium on women’s health and new advances in preventing, detecting and treating women’s diseases on Thursday, Jan. 24.  Called “A Woman's Journey” (AWJ), the event will be held from 9:15 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Raymond F. Kravis Center’s Cohen Pavilion.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center say they have evidence that cancer stem cells for multiple myeloma share many properties with normal stem cells and have multiple ways of resisting chemotherapy and other treatments.

They say that a picture can be worth a thousand words. This especially is true for describing the structures of molecules that function to promote cancer. Researchers at Johns Hopkins have built a three-dimensional picture of an enzyme often mutated in many types of cancers. The results, published Dec. 14 in Science, suggest how the most common mutations in this enzyme might lead to cancer progression.

One way cancer arises is when tumor suppressor genes that normally keep cell growth in check are mysteriously turned off. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that at least one tumor suppressor gene is in fact turned off by a “noncoding” single stranded RNA nucleic acid similar to its double-stranded DNA cousin.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, a Baptist minister, radio and television personality and outspoken civil rights advocate, will be the featured speaker at the 2008 event honoring Martin Luther King Jr.   In what has become a much-anticipated annual tradition, Johns Hopkins Medicine will remember and honor the civil rights leader with tributes, music and community service awards during this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration.

They say that a picture can be worth a thousand words. This especially is true for describing the structures of molecules that function to promote cancer. Researchers at Johns Hopkins have built a three-dimensional picture of an enzyme often mutated in many types of cancers. The results, published Dec. 14 in Science, suggest how the most common mutations in this enzyme might lead to cancer progression.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins and Ohio State University have found that the number of copies of a particular gene can affect the severity of colon cancer in a mouse model. Publishing in the Jan. 3 issue of Nature, the research team describes how trisomy 21, or Down syndrome in humans, can repress tumor growth.

Activating a protein found on some immune cells seems to halt the cells’ typical job of spewing out substances that launch allergic reactions, a study by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests. The findings could eventually lead to new treatments for allergic reactions ranging from annoying bouts of hay fever to deadly asthma attacks.

A morning gargle could someday be more than a breath freshener - it could spot head and neck cancer, say scientists at Johns Hopkins. Their new study of a mouth rinse that captures genetic signatures common to the disease holds promise for screening those at high risk, including heavy smokers and alcohol drinkers.