Exercise: the heart’s fountain of youth

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but endurance exercise seems to make it younger. According to a study conducted at the School of Medicine, older people who did endurance exercise training for about a year ended up with metabolically much younger hearts.

The future of medicine

Photo by Robert BostonThe School of Medicine Class of 2012’s 124 students were presented with a white coat, a long-time symbol of the medical profession, Aug. 15.

Silver is the key to reducing pneumonia associated with breathing tubes

People have long prized silver as a precious metal. Now, silver-coated endotracheal tubes are giving critically ill patients another reason to value the lustrous metal. In a study published in the Aug. 20, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at the School of Medicine and the NASCENT Investigation Group, report that the silver-coated tubes led to a 36 percent reduction of ventilator-associated pneumonia.

$3 million project will study one-sided hearing and cochlear implants

image courtesy of Advanced BionicsCochlear implantJill B. Firszt, a cochlear-implant specialist at the School of Medicine, was working on her doctoral dissertation when she met with a 47-year-old patient who been deaf in one ear since childhood. The patient was scheduled to get a cochlear implant in her deaf ear because she recently had a tumor operation that destroyed the hearing in her good ear. Firszt knew there wasn’t enough pertinent information to predict how well the woman would hear with the implant. That experience inspired Firszt to propose an in-depth study, now funded by the NIH, of one-sided hearing.
View More Stories