UA Health News

Historically, flu seasonality is associated with cold winter conditions in temperate latitudes. A team including UA researchers found evidence that there are two types of environmental conditions associated with seasonal influenza epidemics: cold-dry and humid-rainy. The findings could help improve flu transmission models, surveillance efforts and the timing of vaccine distribution.

ECMO – ExtraCorporeal Membrane Oxygenation – serves as a temporary life support system for patients who have heart or lung failure or both. Since 2006, UAMC has orchestrated last-ditch ECMO transports of eight adult patients and two children, making it one of only a handful of institutions worldwide to be able to provide this service to both adults and children.

Can something as simple as putting on a pair of socks help save the limbs and lives of people with diabetes? The UA and its partners recently were awarded more than $2 million in research grants from the Qatar National Research Fund to study the use of new technology incorporated in specially made socks.

The UA's Dr. Klearchos Papas is researching ways to improve the effectiveness of an implantable device containing insulin-producing islet cells for diabetics in need. His work has the potential to make islet cell transplantation available to a larger number of patients with Type 1 diabetes, and also make it safer for children.

A new app allows UA medical students to interact with a real human heart on their iPads. The Heart Anatomy Explorer I app, developed at the University, uses images of a real human heart to teach students about the organ's structures. College of Medicine faculty members plan to expand the app to include more organs in the future.

Workplace wellness incentive programs may decrease hospitalizations, but not overall health claim costs, according to a new paper by professor of economics Gautam Gowrisankaran of the UA Eller College of Management, out now in Health Affairs. The paper's findings constitute the first rigorous evaluation of a comprehensive, insurance-based wellness program with financial incentives for participation.

The discovery and UA analysis of an extremely rare African American Y chromosome pushes back the time of the most recent common ancestor for the Y chromosome lineage tree to 338,000 years ago. This time predates the age of the oldest known anatomically modern human fossils.

Positive communication is hugely beneficial to your relationships, your mind and your health, researchers say. The UA's Margaret Pitts and her collaborator, Thomas Socha, have organized the first collection of scholarly works devoted to positive interpersonal communication in their discipline.

While in high school, Rhiannon Miller, a UA psychology major, had the idea to train Borzois to serve as psychiatric service dogs for veterans, which led to the establishment of Operation Wolfhound. To date, more than 60 dogs have been placed with veterans across the nation – in New York, Georgia and along the West Coast as well as in Canada and England.

The ground officially has been broken for the new UA Cancer Center at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center/Dignity Health outpatient facility in downtown Phoenix. Located on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, the center is expected open in 2015 and will offer comprehensive cancer services.

Using the Internet to make decisions about taking medications during pregnancy or breastfeeding may lead to poor choices, the Arizona Pregnancy Riskline warns. The riskline is a not-for-profit, telephone-based service at the UA College of Pharmacy with specially trained counselors who educate women and their health-care providers about potentially harmful exposures during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

UA researchers are working on an innovative technology designed to boost diabetic patients' adherence to special footwear prescribed to prevent or heal foot ulcers. Ulcers, when unchecked, can lead to amputation or death. Researchers are working with a small business partner on a sensor that will alert patients when they neglect to wear the prescribed boot.

Medicinal chemists face a multitude of hurdles trying to discover new and effective therapeutics for the treatment of disease. In the UA’s BIO5 Oro Valley facility is a team of College of Pharmacy researchers attempting to address these "speed bumps" along the path from bench to bedside by utilizing new automated technologies and fast chemical methods to increase the rate at which new hypotheses in drug discovery can be effectively evaluated.

The UA's Institute for Place and Wellbeing will explore the connection between the physical environment and human health and well-being. A partnership of the UA College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine in the UA College of Medicine, and the UA Institute of the Environment, the interdisciplinary institute will focus on research and education about human reactions to physical space.

When someone comes to work sick, about half of the commonly touched surfaces in the office become infected by lunchtime, according to a new UA study. Researchers found that simple interventions, such as hand washing and the use of hand sanitizer or disinfecting wipes, can reduce employees' risk of infection by as much as 80 percent.

The UA College of Science's popular spring lecture series, Genomics Now, will present six free lectures exploring the astonishing advances in genomics research. The first lecture will be on Jan. 30 at 7 p.m. in Centennial Hall on the UA campus.

The National Institutes of Health awarded the UA's Kacey Ernst more than $3 million in 2012 for research to prevent the mosquito-borne infectious diseases that cause malaria and dengue. Ernst has a personal connection to the cause because of her ties to Kenya, a place she has traveled to for 15 years since completing her master's research in the country.

Jessica Stebbins was deeply devoted to establishing a yoga program at the UA designed for individuals with low mobility and disabilities, such as herself. After Stebbins died in December 2011, UA students carried her dream forward and since have founded the Yoga for Any Body club and a class by the same name.

A new UA study, published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, looks at the use of text messaging to send nutrition and physical activity information to teenagers. The study found that while teens would be receptive to receiving the educational texts, the messages should be tailored in a way that's teen friendly.