Office of Medical Communications

A new Nature Neuroscience study published by Assistant Professors of Pharmacology Thomas Longden, Ph.D., and Fabrice Dabertrand, Ph.D., determined that capillaries in the brain have a more active function that previously thought.

For many medical students, training in a resource-limited setting is their first exposure to the way most of the world lives, where nylon gloves are used in place of catheters, where the number of radiation machines in a nation can be counted on one hand, where a bed shortage might mean patients sleep on the floor.

All it takes is the flip of a protein “switch” within the tiny wire-like capillaries of the brain to increase the blood flow that ensures optimal brain function. New research has uncovered that capillaries have the capacity to both sense brain activity and generate an electrical vasodilatory signal to evoke blood flow and direct nutrients to nourish hard-working neurons.

March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Among cancers that affect both men and women, colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S., but it is also one of only a few cancers that may be prevented through screening.

Pioneered by Professor James Hudziak, M.D., Dr. Jim to his students, WE has significantly reduced substance abuse on campus while earning national buzz for its novel and ground-breaking approach to neuroplasticity, mindfulness, and the charismatic mastermind behind the program. No college has tried at this level before.

The Class of 2017 learned their residency placements at this year’s Match Day that was held at 12:00 pm in the Hoehl Gallery of the Larner College of Medicine on Friday, March 17.

News of the election of David A. Halsey, M.D., clinical professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation at the Larner College of Medicine and orthopaedic surgeon at the UVM Medical Center, as the first vice president of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), received broad coverage.

Frederick Morin, M.D., dean of the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, and Claude Deschamps, M.D., senior associate dean for clinical affairs and president and CEO of the UVM Medical Group, have announced the appointment of Melissa Davidson, M.D., as associate dean for graduate medical education at the Larner College of Medicine and Designated Institutional Official at the UVM Medical Center, effective immediately.

While the debate regarding the safety of e-cigarettes continues, another issue has emerged: Is vaping addictive?

(MARCH 15, 2017) Clostridium difficile, commonly known as C. diff, affects nearly half a million Americans a year, and leads to several thousand fatalities, according to the CDC. This infection is difficult to treat, especially among those with an antibiotic-resistant strain, but Peter Moses, M.D., professor of medicine at the Larner College of Medicine and gastroenterologist at the UVM Medical Center, uses fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) as a solution.

A huge celebration – and a couple of surprises and twists – were on the agenda for the Larner College of Medicine Class of 2017’s Match Day event on Friday, March 17, 2017.

Jill Jemison, Larner College of Medicine technology services director, and Kerry Swift, M.S., technology licensing officer in the Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) at the University of Vermont, are currently serving as two of eight inaugural BTV Ignite Executive Fellows.

Jonathan Flyer, M.D., a pediatric cardiologist at the UVM Children's Hospital and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Larner College of Medicine at UVM, has been elected as a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC) in recognition of his professional achievement and commitment to quality cardiovascular care.

Community Medical School launched its Spring 2017 series on Tuesday, March 7, with a lecture on “Happiness: Exploring the Science of Well-Being.” The talk by Andrew Rosenfeld, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry, attracted more than 200 attendees.

A commentary on the benefits of global health electives for medical students, coauthored by Majid Sadigh, M.D., director of the Western Connecticut Health Network (WCHN) and UVM Larner College of Medicine’s Global Health Program, and Mitra Sadigh, was featured as a “Viewpoint” in the Association of American Medical College’s AAMC News.

Dr. Long is a neurosurgeon at Cho Ray Hospital who recently completed three months of observership training in the ICU at Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut.

Dr. Mertz, core faculty in Family Medicine at UVM and member of the UVM Global Health Leadership Team, discovered global health by following her own curiosity.

Despite diagnoses for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) occurring in a reported 11 percent of U.S. school-aged kids, clinicians still don’t fully understand the underlying causes of this common condition. Now a brain marker may be on the horizon, thanks to a new approach that provides evidence of a relationship between brain structure and dimensional measures of ADHD symptoms.

A total of thirteen students and five medical residents completed global health electives abroad in Uganda, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe in the month of February. Among those in Uganda were UVM psychiatry residents Dr. Megan Gething and Dr. Molly Rovin, who paved the way for a new partnership in psychiatry between UVM and Makerere College of Health Sciences.

With mammography technology shifting from film to digital, cancer detection rates have improved but so have abnormal interpretation rates.