To understand patterns of alcohol consumption and baseline factors associated with favorable drinking patterns among HIV-infected patients (with current or past alcohol problems), researchers from BUSM studied their drinking patterns and found that many HIV-infected adults with alcohol problems have favorable drinking patterns over time, but alcohol consumption patterns are not necessarily constant. Based on […]
Research on the quality of US resident physician performance levels has often been limited by lack of a comparison group or strict focus on specific diseases and geographical areas. In order to gain insight on differences in quality of care provided by resident physicians and staff physicians, Boston Medical Center (BMC) researchers investigated performance of […]
More than 75 million Americans suffer with chronic pain. Pain accounts for 20 percent of all outpatient visits, over $100 billion dollars per year in direct and indirect costs while analgesics account for 12 percent of all prescriptions. In an effort to provide generalist physicians with the most current literature and data on chronic pain […]
The Department of Pediatrics and the Division of General Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center are dedicated to children, adolescents, and young adults in urban communities. The commitment to keeping this population healthy by promoting safety and preventative medicine, dispensing high-quality clinical care, and advocating for them at a systems […]
The news from Vienna is not all gloom and doom. As 25,000 representatives from the fields of health care, research, business, government, and human rights converged on the Austrian capital for the 18th International AIDS Conference this week, there has been much to celebrate, despite a worldwide increase of nearly 3 million HIV-infected people each […]
Robert C. Cantu, MD, clinical professor of neurosurgery at Boston University School of Medicine and co-director of BU’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE), has been appointed senior advisor to the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee. In this position Dr. Cantu will provide advice and perspective to Committee co-chair H. Hunt Batier, […]
Drug use and drug use disorders are common but often under-recognized in primary care settings. Given the effectiveness of early recognition and brief intervention, BUSM researchers investigated a single-question screening test for drug use and drug use disorders that could be easily incorporated into routine primary care. The single-question test asked patients to report the […]
When it comes to living a long life, our fate is not entirely in our genes. But BU researchers believe that many of those who live a very long life (into their late 90s) have some genetic variances to thank for the extra years. The scientists, lead by Paola Sebastiani at the School of Public […]
BUSM researchers have discovered that Sfrp5, which refers to secreted frizzled-related protein 5, is an anti-inflammatory adipokine whose expression is disrupted in animal models of obesity and type 2 diabetes. The findings, which currently appear on-line in Science, may provide a new way of targeting metabolic disease, specifically obesity. Obesity is a predisposing factor for […]
Unprotected heterosexual transactional sex plays a central role in the spread of HIV in India. Given alcohol’s association with risky sex in other populations and alcohol’s role in HIV disease progression, researchers from BUSM and BUSPH investigated patterns of alcohol use in HIV-infected FSWs and HIV-infected male clients of FSWs in Mumbai. Their analyses identified […]