Health and Medicine

Exenatide, a drug commonly prescribed to help patients with type 2 diabetes improve blood sugar control, also has a powerful and rapid anti-inflammatory effect, a University at Buffalo study has shown. The study of the drug, marketed under the trade name Byetta, was published recently in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Families in Western New York and southern Ontario who are affected by Alzheimer's disease and related disorders now have a comprehensive new resource: the University at Buffalo's Alzheimer's Disease and Memory Disorders Center, the first in the region.

A new University at Buffalo program, supported by more than $900,000 in federal funds, will help translate medical research on alcoholism and other addictions into the best treatments for addicted patients.

In a recent study conducted by scientists at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions involving 154 heavy-drinking college students whose sexual behavior put them at risk for HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), there were two expected findings and one surprise.

Kathleen A. Parks, senior research scientist at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions, who studies women's substance use and associated victimization, recently received a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to continue her research on women's risks for sexual assault associated with heterosexual drinking situations.

The prospect of doing human clinical trials with stem cells to treat diseases like multiple sclerosis may be growing closer, say scientists at the University at Buffalo and the University at Rochester, who have developed a more precise way to isolate stem cells that will make myelin.

A tiny piece of a critical receptor that fuels the brain and without which sentient beings cannot live has been discovered by University at Buffalo scientists as a promising new drug target for Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. The research on the NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptor was published online Oct. 11 in Nature Communications.

A University at Buffalo microbiologist whose lab has been studying the human papilloma virus for years, says that parents should have their children vaccinated with Gardasil, the HPV vaccine.

Surgeons should add their voices to social media and online discussions, while taking care to fully understand the potential security and medical-legal implications. That's the message from two surgeons -- and avid Twitter fans -- in the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, who recently co-authored "Making Social Media Work for Surgeons and Patients," an article published in the Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons.

Scientists at the University at Buffalo have received $1.3 million from the National Institute of Mental Health to test how tiny, magnetic particles can be used to remotely control neurons in the brains of mice. If the work is successful, the research team will have given neuroscientists a powerful, new tool: a non-invasive technique for triggering activity deep inside the brain.