Health and Medicine

Imagine having a decayed tooth repaired, painlessly, without drilling or shots of anesthesia to numb the area. Wishful thinking? Not if two studies being conducted at the University at Buffalo's School of Dental Medicine show positive results.

Schering-Plough has provided $125,000 to the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences to fund the training of a graduate fellow in the school's Pharmaceutics Program. The gift, which will come in $25,000 increments over five years, will support a stipend, tuition and research funding for the student over a five-year period.

Swimmers and scuba divers can improve their swimming endurance and breathing capacity through targeted training of the respiratory muscles, researchers at the University at Buffalo have shown.

Richard V. Lee, M.D., professor of medicine, obstetrics and pediatrics in the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, has received the C.G. Barnes Award from the International Society of Obstetric Medicine in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field.

A blood component called glycated LDL -- a form of low-density lipoprotein, the "bad" cholesterol, with a sugar molecule attached -- is known to be higher in diabetics than non-diabetics, and extensive research has shown that diabetics are at increased risk of a heart attack. Now, for the first time, a new study that followed a cohort of elderly people in southern Italy found that glycated LDL levels increase the risk of heart attack in both diabetics and persons without diabetes.

A University at Buffalo researcher has been awarded a $741,360 grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to develop an educational intervention program to increase living liver donations in New York State.

Boys and girls who have better motor abilities are more physically active and less likely to be sedentary than children with poorer coordination, research conducted with children between the ages of 8 and 10 at the University at Buffalo has shown.

Holiday travelers: Listen up and buckle up! New research shows that unbelted backseat passengers risk injury or death to themselves and the driver seated in front of them in the event of a head-on crash.

A $1.6 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to researchers at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) is funding new research geared to reducing anxiety and craving associated with cessation of cocaine use over the short-term, and reducing cocaine dependence over the long-term.

David R. Pendergast, Ed.D., professor of physiology and biophysics and adjunct professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University at Buffalo, has been appointed director of the Center for Research and Education in Special Environments (CRESE) in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The appointment is effective Jan. 1, 2007.