Health and Medicine

Pulmonary researchers at the University at Buffalo have created asthma-like symptoms in non-asthmatic volunteers by decreasing their lung volume through simulated obesity. The study results suggest that the airway hyperresponsiveness seen in obese patients, which often leads to a diagnosis of asthma, may be treated more successfully through weight reduction than by asthma medication.

Mark J. Lema, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Anesthesiology in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, will be installed as president of the 40,000-member American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) during the organization's annual meeting in Chicago Oct. 14-18.

Sports medicine specialists in the University at Buffalo's Sports Medicine Institute have developed a new method for treating athletes who sustain post-concussion syndrome that, unlike the conventional approach, allows athletes to maintain conditioning while recovering gradually from the injury.

Since 1999, the Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women at the University at Buffalo has collected, preserved and presented the written and oral histories of hundreds of female African-American community builders across Western New York state and southern Ontario. Now, with a $280,000 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the institute is preparing a series of 26 one-hour radio programs derived from its Uncrowned Queens archive that will begin broadcasting in May.

Schizophrenia researchers historically have aligned themselves into two opposing camps: structuralists and functionalists. Structuralists have pursued the idea that the brains of schizophrenics show structural changes in the cortex and brain stem. Functionalists have held to the dopamine antagonist theory: that the neurotransmitter dopamine is malfunctioning, causing the disease's characteristic delusions and hallucinations. UB researchers appear to have broken the stalemate.

Ronald C. Kessler, Ph.D., Harvard University professor and a major figure in the field of mental health in the U.S. and abroad, will present the J. Warren Perry Lecture on Oct. 13 at 3:30 p.m. in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall on UB's North (Amherst) Campus.

When an explosion, accidental cremation or a fire set deliberately to cover a crime destroys a body, precious little may remain to link it to a life once lived. Yet even among the ashes, a team of forensic dental researchers at the University at Buffalo has shown that evidence exists that can help identify human remains when all else -- flesh, bones, teeth, DNA -- is lost.

Western New York women who took part in the landmark 12-year Women's Health Initiative will be celebrated in a "WHI Participant Recognition Day" on Saturday, Sept. 30, from 10 a.m. to noon in front of Farber Hall on the UB South (Main Street) Campus.

Since X-rays were discovered more than a century ago, triggering a revolution in medical imaging, clinicians have sought more powerful ways to "see" into the human body. Now, with a $1.1 million grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation, researchers in the University at Buffalo's Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics are turning their expertise in nanomedicine to the development of new, nanoparticle-based multi-probe systems, launching a new generation of medical imaging.

The University at Buffalo is announcing significant changes in two of the 64 residency training programs that it operates jointly with area hospitals. The formerly suspended training program in otolaryngology (a specialty focusing on the ear, nose and throat) is being reestablished and the residency in radiology will be closed.