Health Sciences In The Media

Changing the way we think about food, not just as fuel but to fight illness and disease, is the focus of a growing culinary medicine program at the University of Arizona, where doctors are being trained to prescribe the right meals as medicine. "Food really is medicine and good food can really heal us, treat, prevent and reverse the diseases of our time," says Farshad Fani Marvasti, MD, MPH, associate professor and director of Public Health, Prevention and Health Promotion Curriculum at the College of Medicine – Phoenix.

COVID-19 has added another health hazard for older adults. Once infected with the virus, people in their 60s, 70s, 80s and above are at increasingly higher risk of experiencing severe COVID-19 illness, hospitalization and death. Although its difficult to precisely measure the impact of immune-system aging, "We know that it adds a massive risk. Those over 80 are 260-fold more likely to die from COVID-19 than those between 18 and 39," says Janko Nikolich-Žugich, MD, PhD, department head and professor of immunobiology at the College of Medicine – Tucson.

Allan J. Hamilton, MD, a professor of neurosurgery at the College of Medicine – Tucson, discusses how the human brain handles stress and the relationship between workplace design and employee well-being. "We get thrown into imbalance, and when we lose that connection with nature, we become perpetually anxious and stressed. Being more inclusive, more diverse and looking at group identity tends to end up being a better equation both for architecture and for the peace of mind of the human brain," Dr. Hamilton said.

Many parents of kids in the 5-11 age group are signaling reluctance to get their youngsters inoculated against the virus, according to national polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Natasha Bhuyan, MD, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Family, Community and Preventative Medicine at the College of Medicine – Phoenix, tweeted Sunday that hundreds of children have died from the virus, making it vitally important for youths to get the shot. “Let’s change the narrative that the COVID vaccine in children is to protect adults – the vaccine is intended to protect *children themselves* from a preventable illness," Dr. Bhuyan tweeted.

A new study suggests that state laws requiring "universal" motorcycle helmet use – instead of helmet laws just for certain ages – may lower the rates of traumatic brain injuries in young riders. Traumatic brain injuries are "the biggest burden in trauma care, so we wanted to see whether having universal helmet laws versus age-specific helmet laws really made a difference in the younger population," said study co-author Bellal Joseph, MD, a trauma surgeon and associate professor of surgery at the College of Medicine – Tucson.

Vaccination against COVID-19 provides stronger protection than immunity from a previous infection with the coronavirus, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Friday. Deepta Bhattacharya, PhD, a professor of immunobiology at the College of Medicine – Tucson, cautioned that it can be very difficult to compare vaccine-induced immunity to infection-induced immunity. “What I would say is that these are maybe not the right terms of the debate,” he said. “The reason to prefer vaccine-induced immunity is that infections can make you really sick, not that they don’t leave you immune,” Dr. Bhattacharya said.

A proposed joint venture between Yuma Regional Medical Center and hospital management company LifePoint Health, a holding of the private equity firm Apollo Management Group, would change the hospitals' not-for-profit status to a for-profit model. Daniel Derksen, MD, professor of public health at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and director of the UArizona Center for Rural Health, discusses various hospital ownership and management models, including the fairly recent introduction of private equity firms into the ownership landscape.

Psychologists and sleep doctors who study dreaming aren’t surprised if the hit Netflix series Squid Game is seeping into your non-waking hours. When you watch something that resonates with you, it’s going to stick with you, particularly if you watched a lot of the show in a short amount of time – and particularly if you’ve done so just before bed, says Michael Grandner, PhD, an associate professor and director of the sleep and health research program at the College of Medicine – Tucson. Dr. Grandner and other dream experts discuss why we dream and, more specifically, why we have nightmares.

A study by researchers at the University of Arizona Health Sciences found that patients undergoing active chemotherapy had a lower immune response to two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. A third dose increased patients’ response. “We wanted to make sure we understand the level of protection the COVID-19 vaccines are offering our cancer patients, especially as restrictions were being eased and more contagious variants were starting to spread,” said Rachna Shroff, MD, MS, chief of gastrointestinal medical oncology at the UArizona Cancer Center.

Researchers at the University of Arizona have successfully tested a Valley fever vaccine for dogs. It's a two-dose vaccine designed to help them fight the disease, which is caused by a fungus called Coccidioides posadasii. "The idea of a vaccine to prevent Valley fever has been the holy grail since the 1950s," said John Galgiani, MD, director of the UArizona Valley Fever Center for Excellence and a professor of medicine. "We created a vaccine that worked. The dogs had all sorts of laboratory evidence of active, very widespread disease, and the vaccine prevented it."