Health and Medicine

R. Lorraine Collins, Ph.D., a prolific researcher in the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) for 22 years, has been appointed associate dean for research in the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions and a professor in its Department of Health Behavior.

Jean K. Brown, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, professor and interim dean of the University at Buffalo School of Nursing, has been named dean of the school following a national search, it was announced today by David L. Dunn, M.D., Ph.D., UB vice president for health sciences.

Children who don't have access to dental care are encouraged to sign up for the annual "Give Kids a Smile" day on Feb. 1, conducted by the School of Dental Medicine at the University at Buffalo and the Pediatric Dental Clinic at Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo.

Celebrex, a popular arthritis drug that blocks pain by inhibiting an enzyme known as COX-2, has been shown in laboratory studies to induce arrhythmia, or irregular beating of the heart, via a novel pathway unrelated to its COX-2 inhibition.

"Body Counts," the 12th annual International Women's Film Festival presented by the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender (IREWG) at the University at Buffalo, will open Jan. 31 and continue on Thursday evenings through March 6 in the Market Arcade Film and Arts Centre, 639 Main St.

A new chemical synthesis method based on a catalyst worth many times the price of gold and providing a far more efficient and economical method than traditional ones for designing and manufacturing extremely novel pharmaceutical compounds is described by its University at Buffalo developers in a review article in the current issue of Nature.

In an effort to improve this process and develop new guidelines for antibiotic use for a potentially deadly staph infection, University at Buffalo researchers are collecting bacterial isolates and clinical information from SAB-infected patients hospitalized in three area hospitals and following their charted progress through inpatient treatment, discharge and for a post-discharge period.

In the 21st century, human tissue can be generated from stem cells and severed limbs are successfully reattached, while the physiological processes governing life's most fundamental event, childbirth labor, remain a medical mystery.

Slow diffusion of patient-managed electronic health information record technologies, or PHRs, has limited the development of an interoperable health information infrastructure that will greatly improve health-care quality and cost and will save lives. For this reason, increasing PHR diffusion has been called a top priority by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Medication errors are one of the most serious problems occurring in doctor's offices and out-patient clinics, and older persons with chronic conditions are the most vulnerable. An experimental information technology (IT) intervention designed to help reduce such errors, developed by Gurdev Singh, Ph.D., director of the Patient Safety Research Center at the University at Buffalo, will begin this spring in eight ambulatory medical offices throughout Western New York.