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NEW YORK, NY (May 10, 2021) Scientists have discovered that many esophageal cancers turn on ancient viral DNA that was embedded in our genome hundreds of millions of years ago. It was surprising, says Adam Bass, MD, the Herbert and Florence Irving Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, who led the study published May 10 in
Nature Genetics. We weren t specifically searching for the viral elements, but the finding opens up a huge new array of potential cancer targets that I think will be extremely exciting as ways to enhance immunotherapy.
Onscreen text reads:
The woman begins to sing the National Anthem.
Woman singing: O say can you see.
Screen cuts to view of the New York City skyline during the day.
Woman singing: By the dawn s early light.
Screen pans to Central Park.
Onscreen text reads: Vocal performance by Grace Victoria D’Haiti, Barnard College, 2021.
Screen pans over the Manhattan skyline, the Empire State Building, cuts to the skyline at night.
D’Haiti singing: What so proudly we hailed at the twilight s last gleaming.
Screen cuts to
The Thinker and other sculptures.
D’Haiti singing: Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight.
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NEW YORK, NY (April 29, 2021) A new study is drawing the most detailed picture yet of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the lung, revealing mechanisms that result in lethal COVID-19, and may explain long-term complications and show how COVID-19 differs from other infectious diseases.
Led by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, the study found that in patients who died of the infection, COVID-19 unleashed a detrimental trifecta of runaway inflammation, direct destruction and impaired regeneration of lung cells involved in gas exchange, and accelerated lung scarring.
Though the study looked at lungs from patients who had died of the disease, it provides solid leads as to why survivors of severe COVID may experience long-term respiratory complications due to lung scarring.
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NEW YORK, NY Diagnosing chronic kidney disease, which is often undetected until it causes irreversible damage, may soon become automated with a new algorithm that interprets data from electronic medical records.
The algorithm, developed by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, automatically scours a patient s electronic medical record for results of blood and urine tests and, using a mix of established equations and machine learning to process the data, can alert physicians to patients in the earliest stages of chronic kidney disease.
A study of the algorithm was published in the journal
npj Digital Medicine in April.
Researchers reveal urban-rural disparity in U.S. children s oral health
Meaningful legislation addressing health care inequities in the U.S. will require studies examining potential health disparities due to geographic location or economic status.
An interdisciplinary team at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and the University of South Carolina (UofSC) report in the Journal of Public Health Dentistry that rural children are less likely to receive preventive dental care than urban children. Using samples from 20,842 respondents from a 2017 National Survey of Children s Health, the team determined the existence of an urban-rural disparity in U.S. children s oral health. This disparity can have serious consequences for children s oral health.