The five most-read stories on Scope this week were:
Stanford Hospital & Clinics introduces month-long heart health challenge: Stanford Hospital & Clinics' 28-Day Heart Health Challenge promotes simple changes people can make to their diets and exercise routines that can have a big impact on their heart health. Each day of the week features a different theme with a related challenge.
The mystery surrounding lung-transplant survival rates: A recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle offered a look at the challenges facing lung transplant patients and explored why a significant number don’t live beyond the five-year mark, despite improvements in survival rates.
Stanford forum on how food policies affect our nation’s obesity rates posted online: The Stanford Health Policy Forum hosted an event examining the reasons why we get fat and how different diet trends and food policies affect our nation’s obesity rates. The forum featured a conversation between science writer Gary Taubes and Christopher Gardner, PhD, director of Nutrition Studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. Video of their discussion is available online.
Ask Stanford Med: Stanford interventional cardiologist taking questions on heart health: This week, Stanford interventional cardiologist William Fearon, MD, is taking questions about cardiovascular research, including advancements in diagnosing, treating and preventing heart disease and stroke. Questions can be submitted until Monday (Feb.11) by either sending a tweet that includes the hashtag #AskSUMed or posting your question in the comments section of this entry.
Biomarker can predict graft-versus-host disease in men after transplants from women donors: In a study (subscription required) published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stanford researchers identified cells that predict the onset of chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) in men receiving bone marrow transplants from female donors. The findings could lead to the development of new therapies that may mitigate or prevent cGVHD, the primary adverse outcome of bone marrow transplantation.
