UCSF researchers have shown for the first time that the human fetal immune system arises from an entirely different source than the adult immune system, and is more likely to tolerate than fight foreign substances in its environment.
The fin…
UCSF researchers have identified an existing medication that restores key elements of the immune system that, when out of balance, lead to a steady decline in immunity and health as people age.
The team found that extremely low doses of the dr…
A team of UCSF researchers has engineered E. coli with the key molecular circuitry that will enable genetic engineers to program cells to communicate and perform computations.
The work builds into cells the same logic gates found in electronic…
Attempting to resolve a long-standing controversy, UCSF researchers have shown that people suffering from chronic pain due to nervous system damage ? known as neuropathic pain — improved significantly after an eight-week course of the morphine-like medication levorphanol. Neuropathic pain affects about three million people in the U.S., and is considered very difficult to treat.
Using a human gene, scientists have corrected a defect in infertile flies that prevented them from carrying out a key step in the creation of sperm. The finding advances the effort to identify the genes involved in human male infertility, the researchers say, and suggests a possible target for a male contraceptive.
Diabetes management may improve when physicians use an interactive communication technique with patients. Unfortunately, physicians underuse this simple strategy, according to a new study, which appears in the January 13, 2003 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine.
Prior research has shown that patients fail to recall or comprehend as much as half of what they are told by their physicians, according to UCSF researchers. “In this study, we tried to identify simple communication techniques that make physicians more effective teachers,” said Dean Schillinger, MD, UCSF assistant professor of medicine at San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center (SFGHMC) and lead author of the study.
Only 58 percent of patient care physicians in California are accepting new patients with HMO coverage, and the “California Model” of loose networks of private practice physicians organized into large managed care practice organizations is unraveling, according to University of California research. “California led the nation’s charge into managed care. Our study of the state’s physicians tells us that California has now sounded the retreat,” said Kevin Grumbach, MD, director of the Center for California Health Workforce Studies. “Private physicians are starting to abandon HMOs, IPAs and managed care networks.”
Previously secret documents show that tobacco companies provided money, cultivated social and political ties, and aggressively offered free cigarettes to African American leadership groups ?even as the evidence grew that African Americans bear a disproportionate share of the tobacco-related disease burden, researchers at the University of California say.