September 3, 2014
Health Sciences News Digest
Human, fruit fly and round worm genomes share core control features
Although modern roundworms, fruit flies and humans are separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution, all three species use many similar molecular strategies to control cell growth, development and function, according to research conducted by a collaboration of scientists from around the world, including several from the UW.
“If features of the genomes of these disparate organisms are the same, it is likely those features are important and fundamental to cell function,” said Robert Waterston, UW professor and chair of genome sciences, and a co-author on several papers on this research in the Aug. 28 Nature. The work is part of a federally funded effort to understand the genomes of two organisms common in biomedical research, Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly, and Caenorhabditis elegans, a 1 millimeter-long, soil-dwelling roundworm, and to correlate findings with those of the human genome.
Read about the research at: http://hsnewsbeat.uw.edu/story/human-fruit-fly-and-worm-genomes-share-core-features
UW Medicine outpatients will be able to see doctor’s notes in their medical records
Patients become more involved in their medical care when they can read their doctors’ full clinical notes in their online medical record. So says research accumulated over the past several years at three U.S. clinical sites, one of them Harborview Medical Center.
That finding, and the realization among most participating doctors that their initial misgivings about the open notes concept were unfounded, is leading UW Medicine to make that same access available in late October to outpatients at all of its clinics and hospitals.
See how open notes work: http://hsnewsbeat.uw.edu/story/uw-medicine-outpatients-get-access-doctors%E2%80%99-full-notes
Doug Black, UW associate professor of pharmacy practice, confers with students in the Bracken Pharmacy Learning Center. From left are Zsolt Hepp, Mitul Patel and Tulip Younes.Karen Heath
Teaching about rapidly changing health topics like Ebola
Dr. Doug Black, an infectious-disease specialist and UW associate professor of pharmacy practice, describes how he teaches students about Ebola, a fast-changing health topic, by appealing to their curiosity, sense of discovery, and desire for accurate, up-to-date information.
Follow the Q & A: http://hsnewsbeat.uw.edu/story/how-teach-about-rapidly-changing-topic-ebola
Insight into successful depression care for women
In America, about a fourth of women will experience a major depressive episode in their lifetimes. UW research has shown that collaborative care from a primary-care provider and a mental health professional is an effective model for treating women’s depression. The newest report, published Aug. 26 in the online American Journal of Psychiatry, found that women with publicly funded health insurance or without insurance coverage experienced greater improvement in depression symptoms, with collaborative care, than did women with commercial insurance. The method the researchers used, called DAWN for Depression Attention for Women Now, will be offered at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Learn more: http://hsnewsbeat.uw.edu/story/qa-insights-successful-depression-care-women
Tag(s): Department of Genome Sciences • health care and mental health • infectious disease • medicine & pharmaceuticals • School of Medicine
