UTMB News

Chronic pain, chronic fatigue syndromes, sleep disorders like sleep apnea and restless legs, anxiety, medications, organ problems like a bladder issue — all these and more must be considered as part of assessing the cause of sleep problems and treating them. Dr. Victor S. Sierpina offers tips to help you get the sleep you need. One is to reduce screen time before bedtime, so go ahead and put your cell phone down now.

Galveston’s St. Vincent’s House, working with the University of Texas Medical Branch, has opened this clinic for the most underserved on the island at Central Methodist Church, 3308 Ave. O 1/2. “Here, they are in a safe, trusted environment,” said Dr. Miles Farr. “Working alongside the church leadership is a key element to the success of this collaboration.”

More than 200 fourth-year medical students learned March 18 where they will serve as residents during the annual Match Day event at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Match Day is a national event in which medical students find where they will do their postgraduate residency programs.

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston is receiving an endowment of $250,000 toward a Doctor of Clinical Nutrition program from Sodexo, a health care food service and facilities management company, officials with Sodexo said Monday. Pending approval, the program will begin in the spring semester of 2023.

The University of Texas Medical Branch plans to provide a physician to help care for the thousands of patients Dr. Nancy Hughes treated at her medical practice. Hughes, 67, died March 18 after she was struck by a vehicle on the far east end of Seawall Boulevard. “Nancy Hughes has been a very valued member of our medical staff since she first opened her practice in the 1990s. We wanted to be sure to offer her patients that continuity of care,” President Ben Raimer said. Before opening her own practice, she worked at the medical branch and continued to have admission privileges there.

Attorneys for Melissa Lucio, a Harlingen mother of 14 who is on death row for the 2007 death of her 2-year-old daughter, Mariah, are calling on Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant her a stay of execution in a new clemency application. A slew of supporters and medical and forensic experts from across the state have joined in seeking clemency for her. One of those experts, Dr. Michael Laposata, chairman of the Department of Pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, believes there is evidence to support Mariah had been a victim of Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation, a disorder that causes extensive bruising following a head trauma, which her lawyers say occurred after her fall down the stairs. Texas Public Radio also reported Laposata’s expertise.

The Deer Park Community Advisory Council Program Planning Committee undertook a census review after a 2019 University of Texas Medical Branch study noted a correlation between cancer rates and residents’ proximity to refineries.

The U.K. news outlet talked to nutritionists and referenced a UTMB study in this feature. “Powders have a high concentration of protein and research conducted by the University of Texas Medical Branch found that a person can consume around 25g to 30g of protein per meal.”

Because of the rising number of cases of drug-resistant epilepsy, new and innovative interventions based on brain neuromodulation are needed to treat this life-altering disease. Dr. Prashant Rai explains how electrical brain stimulation is one of those innovations.

“Confronting grief is a daily event in medical practice,” writes Dr. Victor S. Sierpina in his column. “Be there for those who grieve. You might not know what to say. That’s not important. Don’t run away because of your awkwardness or fear of saying something wrong or of your own pain. Be there for them. Healing grief is a group process and joined journey.”

Since the 1990s, scientists have known that some people are “supertasters” who experience many tastes with more intensity — sugar is sweeter and broccoli more bitter. As we begin to understand human genetics, scientists are finding biological foundations of different food likes and dislikes, Dr. Sally Robinson explains in her column.

In their Medical Discovery News Column, Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel discuss a Dark Age precedent behind a conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 vaccine would transform people into vampires.

University of Texas Medical Branch researchers have developed a vaccine that could protect against the deadly Nipah virus in just three days. All six monkeys given an experimental jab seven days before being exposed to a lethal dose of the disease survived. Two-thirds of primates given the shot three days in advance lived. Many other international news outlets carried a related story from the Indo-Asian News Service that cited Dr. Thomas W. Geisbert from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UTMB. The experimental vaccine was found to be “safe, immunogenic and effective at protecting the monkeys from a high dose of Nipah virus given shortly after immunization,” Geisbert wrote in the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

UTMB researchers discovered an increase in mortality rates among Medicare beneficiaries in the 30 days after hospital admission for non-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (non-SARS-CoV-2) causes during the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020 through September 2021), according to a study published online March 9 in JAMA Network Open.

Fancy a tipple? Research from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston suggests that light alcohol consumption during later life helped improve people’s episodic memory if they did not have dementia. Needless to say, it’s important to drink only in moderation as you age. If you are concerned about this issue, speak to a doctor first.

“We tend to think children are like small adults in many ways, but in terms of energy utilization, they’re definitely not the equivalent of small adults,” write Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel in their Medical Discovery News column. “They consume more energy than a pregnant person and even more than growing teenage boys. Unbelievable! Scientists have stated that in terms of burning energy, young children are like a different species.”