Office of Medical Communications

With the temperatures beginning to cool and the return of students to the University of Vermont campus, it's time for the launch of Community Medical School's Fall 2016 series!

Vermont electrophysiologist Peter Spector, M.D., has uncovered a wealth of new information about why the heart’s electrical system works the way it does – or goes awry. And like a guy with a great joke, he feels compelled to share it with others.

A number of common conditions are mistaken for multiple sclerosis (MS), a disabling central nervous system disease, say researchers at four academic medical centers across the U.S in a study published online today in the journal Neurology.

University of Vermont College of Medicine Associate Dean for Diversity & Inclusion Margaret A. Tandoh, M.D., recently announced that Michael Upton, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry, has joined the Office of Diversity & Inclusion as faculty development liaison. Upton is continuing his clinical and service responsibilities while taking on this additional new role supporting the development, implementation and assessment of diversity and inclusion initiatives for faculty development.

New research provides insight into a long-observed, but little-understood connection between chronic pain and anxiety and offers a potential target for treatment. The study’s findings, published as an Article in Press in Biological Psychiatry, show that increased expression of PACAP – a peptide neurotransmitter the body releases in response to stress – is also increased in response to neuropathic pain and contributes to these symptoms.

Innovation in healthcare begins and ends with the patient,” says University of Vermont medical student Alexander Marchese ’19, who adds that “although technologies are developed in the lab, they are often conceived in the clinic and can only be fully appreciated once they reach the patient.”

In conjunction with the launch of the “Move Mountains” campaign in October 2015, the University of Vermont Foundation set new records in its fundraising activities on behalf of the university during fiscal year 2016, surpassing historic milestones reached a year ago for both commitments and receipts from donors.

Last summer, after graduating from the University of Vermont College of Medicine, Eric Chang, M.D.’15, saw first-hand how an elderly man struggling to care for his sick wife could get so tired and distracted that he would forgot to take his blood-pressure medication.

Boston Scientific Corporation co-founder and medical device pioneer John Abele will present the inaugural Stetson Technological Advances in Medicine Lecture on Tuesday, August 23, 2016, at noon in Carpenter Auditorium in the Given Building at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. His lecture, titled “The Law of Accelerating Returns,” will focus on the challenges facing the medical field as a result of the exponential acceleration of promising technological developments.

The University of Vermont is launching a new graduate certificate program in fall 2016 that features a concise, six-course immersion in the quantitative sciences of public health used for analyzing diseases and health-related conditions.

Claude Deschamps, M.D., president and CEO of the University of Vermont Medical Group, has announced that Donald Mathews, M.D., professor of anesthesiology, has accepted the position of physician advisor for the UVM Health Network’s new Physician Organization (PO), an expansion of the UVM Medical Group.

As the new academic year is set to begin, the innovative work of four University of Vermont research teams - including two groups from the College of Medicine - is moving closer to the marketplace in the wake of a Shark Tank-like competition called SPARK-VT held earlier this summer.

First things first, what is the difference between UVA and UVB rays? Both UVA and UVB rays are forms of ionizing radiation from the sun. Both types of rays cause damage at the cellular level.

A heart attack continues to harm cardiac muscle even after the immediate problem – a blocked artery – is fixed, but University of Vermont researchers have developed a new biologic drug that can preserve blood vessels critical to the body’s blood-pumping system.

The University of Vermont College of Medicine welcomed its largest first-year class in history on August 8, 2016 for Orientation 2016, a week-long course that launches their medical school career. The Class of 2020’s 120 members were selected from roughly 6,000 applicants and 619 interviewees.

University of Vermont Cellular, Molecular and Biomedical Sciences graduate student Jessica Sheehe has come to know all of the quirks of a protein called PKG: She’s responsible for expressing and purifying PKG in the lab and ensuring that the billions of insect cells tricked into producing this protein remain healthy.

You’ve been working for a long time – years and years – to get to this point. It’s easy to get lost in the tangle of medical school applications and expectations, and trying to figure out an answer to the question, “What do they want?” But before you go any further, take a moment – breathe – and think about something else for a few minutes.

Traveling roughly 90 miles to the White River Junction, Vt.-based Veterans’ Administration Medical Center from the Burlington, Vt. area can be difficult, especially in winter. It’s even more challenging for the veteran who is living with chronic pain or has been diagnosed with a sleep disorder or cardiac arrhythmia.

When University of Vermont neurologist Michael Hehir, M.D., treats patients with a relatively rare neuromuscular disorder called Myasthenia Gravis, he has to weigh the benefits of the medications he prescribes against their typical side effects.