Quoted: “These immunotherapy treatments are unquestionably game changers,” said Dr. Mark Albertini, an oncologist with the Carbone Cancer Center at UW Health.
Albertini said the courage patients like Daly showed in participating in the early trials of immunotherapy played a key role in the success now being seen.
“Those patients were both incredible and those patients were vital in getting where we are today,” Albertini said.
Quoted: “You have to be pretty sick to get it in the first place,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar, Medical Director for Infection Control at University of Wisconsin Health. “so that’s why already, the deck is stacked against you. And then once you get it, because it causes infections like bloodstream infections, which are as severe of an infection as you can get, it increases the death rate even further.”
Quoted: UW Infection Control Medical Director Nasia Safdar says those with underlying medical issues need to pay attention to the information.
“I think organ transplant, dialysis individuals or nursing home residents.”
Dr. Safdar says the symptoms of Elizabethkingia include a fever.
“It’s because you have bacteria in the blood stream, depending on the sight of the infection, if it’s pneumonia you would have respiratory issues, a skin infection, you might see redness at the wound,” Dr. Safdar said.
Quoted: UW plastic surgeon Dr. Ahmed Afifi, assistant professor of surgery, performs a migraine relief surgery that’s fairly new, and wanted to know how it was working for his patients. So, he went to Facebook.
He searched some support groups and migraine relief pages, and turned six months of patient posts into data. When he analyzed the results, they surprised him.
“81 percent of the patients after migraine surgery are saying that they got better after the surgery,” said Afifi. “And what’s amazing about that is when you compare … to the results from the big scientific articles that have been published, these articles are reporting a success rate of 79 percent, 82 percent, 83 percent.”
The phone sitting on the desk of Dr. Kathleen Antony, a maternal fetal medicine physician with UW Health, has been ringing regularly in recent weeks with calls from people asking questions about the Zika virus.
UW Health and UnityPoint Health-Meriter — which escalated competition against each other a few years ago, before Meriter Health Services became part of UnityPoint Health — are talking about developing a “closer partnership.”
Noted: UW Hospital and Madison’s Veterans Hospital haven’t had any cases, and Meriter Hospital has had two since 2014, spokespeople said.
Quoted: The medical community has known about the bacteria for a long time, and its presence in the environment “is ubiquitous,” said Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.
Doctors say a mild winter mixed with an early thaw means mold allergies are back earlier this season.
“When the snow starts to melt once the ground shows up that’s when we have outdoor mold,” Adult Allergist at UW Health, Dr. Tom Puchner, says. (Puchner is clinical assistant professor of allergy and immunology.)
Even though there is snow on the ground and below freezing temperatures, Dr. Puchner says current conditions can still affect those who suffer from mold allergies.
Noted: UW Health officials said UW Hospital has not had any of the cases.
From a medical perspective, the benefits have been unequivocal. One study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that a statewide rule that prohibited full contact during the first week of the season, and limited full contact to 75 minutes during the second week and to 60 minutes per week in the third week and beyond, had an immediate impact.
Noted: The founder of the company, Gregory Piefer, studied at UW-Madison. The company performed a national search for places to locate their new facility, but Pitas said keeping the local company in Wisconsin brings the company full circle.
“The idea that work that goes on at the university should help people throughout the state. So, this is a great example of technology coming out of the university and helping people in Janesville with great-paying jobs,” she said.
Also quoted: Richard Steeves, professor emeritus of human oncology.
Doctors at UW Hospital performed the heart transplant surgery, but the heart traveled more than 1,000 miles to save Wright’s life.
The donor was Brooke Dawkins, 19, who died in a traffic accident in Orlando, Florida.
Quoted: “70 to 80% of the time we get this correct, and every now and then there’s a miscalculation,” Dr. Jonathon Temte, UW Health, says
That’s because he says they are making the predictions 9 months before the flu season.
“Last year was one of those situations where the virus that emerged or started circulating was different than what was in the vaccine,” Dr. Temte says.
Noted: Research “is accelerating right now,” said Dorothy Farrar-Edwards, chair of the department of kinesiology at University of Wisconson-Madison and core leader of outreach, recruitment and education at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, referencing recently passed legislation that will give $300 million to the National Institute of Health specifically for Alzheimer’s research in 2016.
Also quoted: Barbara Bowers, professor and associate dean for research in the school of nursing at UW, said “decades of research” have shown that “social engagement is actually one of the most important things you can do for quality of life and longevity.”
At the beginning of 2016, UW Health cut the price of its cafeteria salad bar almost in half, from $8.00 a pound to $4.99 a pound. In just the first month of the price cut, the hospital reports it sold 5,000 more salads than it had in other months.
For the most part, eye floaters — spots in the eye that can look like specks, strings or cobwebs — are annoying, but for the most part, the viewer doesn’t have to do anything about them.Most eye floaters are caused by age-related changes, according to the Mayo Clinic. Here’s how they can happen, according to Dr. David Gamm, who is the director of the McPherson Institute of Eye Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As people age, the jelly substance in the middle of the eye, vitreous, loses its firmness and becomes more liquid. As that happens, the proteins and molecules that make up that substance band together and form strings or balls. They then float around in that core liquefied area in the center of the eye.
The first comprehensive study of lower extremity body injuries in high school athletes shows those who specialize in one sport are at a much higher risk of injury.
Quoted: “We found overall slightly less than 40 percent specialized in a sport, meaning they really concentrated on that one sport. They may play in multiple sports, but concentrated on one,” says Tim McGuine, senior scientist at UW School of Medicine and Public Health and author of the study’s findings.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to replace its required Tonight sexual assault program with a new program in 2017. Incoming students are required to take the online Tonight course, which teaches students how to spot, prevent and cope with sexual assault.
UW Health surgeons, who have pressed for coverage for all state workers, say the move could save $60 million over 10 years by reducing costs from diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea and other conditions related to obesity.
An ambitious project to map the human brain by the National Institutes of Health has funded a four-year, $5 million statewide study to image the brains of people with epilepsy. Researchers at UW-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin have joined the NIH Human Connectome Project, a national library of medical imaging data being used to create maps of human brain connectivity.
The state Assembly has approved a broad package of legislation aimed at improving the services and care of those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
Free memory screenings and caregiving workshops will be part of a University of Wisconsin Health event in Madison dedicated to raising awareness of Alzheimer’s disease in African-American communities.
Noted: The 10-bill package includes proposals to spend $50,000 for virtual dementia tours, in which participants wear goggles to simulate dementia effects, and give the University of Wisconsin-Madison an additional $50,000 for Alzheimer’s research.
The state Assembly is set to approve a package of legislation designed to help people cope with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
The 10-bill package includes proposals to spend $50,000 for virtual dementia tours, in which participants wear goggles to simulate dementia effects, and give the University of Wisconsin-Madison an additional $50,000 for Alzheimer’s research.
Letter to the editor from UW-Madison undergraduate student, Ryan Prestil, president of the Student Society for Stem Cell Research, opposing current efforts in the state to restrict fetal tissue research.
UW-Madison researchers published a journal Feb. 11 detailing how they genetically reprogrammed the most common type of cells in mammalian connective tissue into master heart cells.
The research team, led by Timothy J. Kamp, said that the technology they created has the possibility of producing a virtually unlimited amount of the three major types of cells in the human heart, according to a university release.
As the Zika virus continues to make headlines around the world, researchers here in Madison are working hard to find answers to questions surrounding the outbreak. Next Monday they are hoping to start their research on the virus’ effects.
“I’m excited about this in the same way a meteorologist would be excited about a hurricane,” said David O’Connor. He’s one of the professors heading the Zika virus study at UW, and there are many reasons why he is passionate about this study.
Skiers and snowboarders filled the slopes at Tyrol Basin in Mount Horeb on Monday.
Quoted: “Medical education and nursing education is really grappling with: ‘How do we train the health professionals of the future to care for the patient and not for the electronic health records?’” says Katharyn May, a professor and the dean of the UW School of Nursing.
Noted: Trey Schwab left Marquette University’s basketball staff to work with the UW Hospitals Organ and Tissue Donation program — work that helped lead to the state of Wisconsin establishing a donor registry in 2010.
“We actually had to put together a multi-year plan and strategy. Took us about three years to get to game day, so to speak. It was the longest scouting report of our lives,” Schwab said.
The National Institutes of Health is funding a Zika Virus at UW-Madison. While many research teams across the country are still drafting their proposals, a team led by UW-Madison Pathology professor Dave O’Connor and associate professor of Pathobiological Sciences Thomas Friedrich will begin their first study on Monday.
UW Health, a Madison health care system, said Tuesday that Dr. Alan Kaplan, executive vice president and chief clinical transformation officer for UnityPoint Health in West Des Moines, Iowa, has been named chief executive officer of UW Health.
(Video) Quoted: David Gamm, director of the McPherson Eye Research Institute and associate professor, ophthalmology and visual sciences.
UW Health has named Dr. Alan S. Kaplan as its new chief executive officer. According to a release from UW Health, Kaplan is a nationally known health care leader with a track record of leading large-scale clinical and cultural transformation with a focus on care coordination.
Kaplan currently serves as executive vice president and chief clinical transformation officer for UnityPoint Health in West Des Moines, Iowa.
Dr. Alan Kaplan, executive vice president and chief clinical transformation officer for Iowa-based UnityPoint Health, has been selected as the new chief executive officer of UW Health, officials said Tuesday.
Hundreds of teams applied, but a team of UW-Madison researchers was one of only eight teams that were chosen in the Mind Matters Challenge co-sponsored by the NCAA and U.S Department of Defense.
Together these two entities have contributed more than $40 million towards the study of concussions. The UW-Madison team consists of Assistant Professor of Human Ecology Dee Warmath and Athletic Training and Kinesiology Professor Dr. Andrew Winterstein.
Over the next two years the team will work with some of the 2,500 student and club team athletes on UW-Madison campus. These students will help them test out new strategies for getting the word out on how dangerous ignoring a concussion can be.
UW-Madison’s Jorge Osorio, Matthew Aliota and Jonathon Patz speak about the spread of Zika virus, funding issues in infectious disease research, the interdisciplinary nature of the work, and the role of climate and climate change in the global spread of the virus.
Matthew Aliota, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine who helped detect Zika in Colombia, discusses a possible reason why Colombia has not yet seen cases of the rare birth defect linked to the virus in Brazil.
The spread of mosquito-born Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects in children of infected women, has led to travel advisories for pregnant women and, in some countries, advice that women delay pregnancy entirely. What is Zika, and how can countries fight it? Joy Cardin talks to UW-Madison’s Kristen Bernard about how Zika is spreading, the challenges it poses, and how big a problem it may become in the U.S.
When it comes to young people, their health and lifestyle habits, the large amounts of sugar they consume and linkages to diseases like obesity are documented and well known. But in 2014, University of Wisconsin–Madison cardiologist and assistant professor Heather Johnson brought to the nation’s attention a grim and lesser-known health fact about young adults: 1 in 10 suffer from hypertension and at rates that creep close to those seen in people as old as their parents and grandparents. And even when these young adults are considered hypertensive based on their numbers, they often go undiagnosed and untreated, Johnson concluded.
Noted: The bills would lay out $50,000 in additional funding annually for Alzheimer’s research at UW-Madison. The committee adopted all the bills Thursday. The only legislator to cast a “no” vote on any of them was Sen. Leah Vukmir. She voted against the UW-Madison bill.
Quoted: “What they’re recommending is that if you traveled to a place where Zika virus is, which is an ever-changing thing, that you avoid donating blood, if you’ve traveled there within 28 days,” said Dr. Daniel Shirley, a clinical professor of infectious disease at UW Health.
Shirley said that right now there is not a test to screen for the Zika virus in donated blood.
“Each test that they run on transfusion blood is a big process to institute that across the board, and so it would take some standardization and some testing before that ever happened,” Shirley said.
In adults, the symptoms of the Zika virus are relatively mild—rashes, fever, joint pain, malaise. Most who are infected may not even know it. But as this seemingly routine disease spreads across the Americas, so do cases of a much more severe problem: infants born with microcephaly. UW-Madison’s Kristen Bernard talks about a potential reason why.
Kristin Bernard, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who specialises in dengue and other mosquito-borne diseases, said that tropical diseases are often under-researched because they do not affect developed countries. “Now because [Zika is] potentially causing a pandemic, and it’s definitely widespread in the Americas, the WHO is concerned,the CDC and the NIH is concerned,” she said.
Noted: The bills would lay out $50,000 to purchase licenses for a virtual dementia tour; $50,000 in additional funding annually for Alzheimer’s research at UW-Madison; and $1 million in additional money annually for the state’s Alzheimer’s family and caregiver support program.
The Legislature’s budget committee is set to vote on five bills to help people cope with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.The bills would lay out $50,000 to purchase licenses for a virtual dementia tour, a program that simulates dementia; $50,000 in additional funding annually for Alzheimer’s research at UW-Madison; $1 million in additional money annually for the state’s Alzheimer’s family and caregiver support program; $465,000 in ongoing funding to support four more dementia care specialists spread across counties with fewer than 150,000 people and a state specialist trainer; and an additional $250,000 in fiscal year 2016-17 for state grants for training county and regional crisis teams on providing help to dementia sufferers.
(Video) UW-Health registered dietitian Julie Andrews talks to Eden Checkol about a date night cooking class offered at the American Center.
Noted: El Nino, a natural warming of parts of the central Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide, usually puts northeastern Brazil into a drought, as it did last year. Aedes aegypti does well in less-developed regions in droughts, because it lives in areas where poorer people store water in outdoor containers, said Jonathan Patz, director of the global health institute at the University of Wisconsin.
Executive Director of University Health Services Sarah Van Orman said Thursday the campuswide smoking policy will undergo three changes in an updated version.
UW-Madison’s current smoking policy, developed in 1991 and last amended in 2008, calls for all university-owned buildings, indoor areas and vehicles to remain smoke-free, as well as outdoor areas belonging to the university medical center.
Van Orman said campus policy does not fully align with the Wisconsin Indoor Air Act, a change that will appear in the updated version to comply with state law.
Quoted: Matthew Aliota, a University of Wisconsin expert on the spread of mosquito-borne viruses, said scientists believe the cycles of Zika transmission are different in Uganda. While the Aedes aegypti aegypti in Latin America and the Caribbean prefers feeding on human blood, in Uganda the other type of the mosquito is spreading the virus. And that one prefers feeding on animals.
“Most of the transmission is in the animal cycle, with occasional spillover in humans,” said Aliota, who recently studied the eruption of Zika cases in Colombia.
Quoted: Dr. Kristen Bernard (associate professor, pathobiological sciences) says the biggest threat is to unborn babies, with the potential of birth defects. In adults and children, Bernard says the symptoms are relatively minor, like feelings of weakness or the flu.
“It is possible that we could have some locally acquired transmission in the United States,” said Dr. Bernard. “If we do have that happen, it would probably be in the southern areas, such as Florida.”
Quoted: Joseph Glass, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in addiction and treatment, said expanding access to ADFs is not a panacea for the problem.
University of Wisconsin doctors said the bill will help break down barriers and could lead to more organ donors.
“We need to be cognizant of what subtle disincentives are out there and try to remove as many as possible and job security is really important,” said Dr. Dixon Kaufman, the Chief of the Division of Transplantation (and professor of transplant surgery).
A new paper says that the first tests confirming transmission of the Zika virus in Colombia were carried out by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Colombia’s Universidad de Sucre.
Smoking cessation pills aren’t any better than nicotine patches or lozenges at helping people successfully quit, a U.S. study suggests.
On the afternoon of Friday, January 17, about 30 people filled the Walnut Way Conservation Corp. (2240 N 17th St) to discuss UW-Madison School of Medicine’s TRIUMPH programand showcase its accomplishments.
(Video) Lily’s Luau is known for its tropical food, music and attire, but it’s all for a great cause. The event raising money for epilepsy research on the University of Wisconsin campus is this weekend. Quoted: Antoine Madar, research assistant in neuroscience; Mathew (Matt) Jones, associate professor of neuroscience.
A bold, big push begins Wednesday to help the tens of thousands of people in Wisconsin affected by Alzheimer’s or dementia.
There’s growing concern here in the United States over the possible spread of an unfamiliar virus called Zika. Dr. Jonathan Temte, chair of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and Professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health explains what you need to know about the virus.
