Mary Sammel, ScD, also works to improve people’s health and wellbeing as part of her personal life. She and her family are volunteer puppy raisers for The Seeing Eye, an organization that trains guide dogs for the visually impaired.

"The substantial variation in prescribing patterns of such extremely addictive medications for minor injuries results in many thousands of pills entering the community and places patients at an increased risk of continued use and potentially addiction," says lead author M. Kit Delgado, MD, MS

Cigarette smokers may boost their risk of clogged heart arteries by weakening a gene that otherwise protects these important blood vessels, researchers have found. "This has been one of the first big steps towards solving the complex puzzle of gene-environment interactions that lead to coronary heart disease," said study lead author Danish Saleheen, PhD.

Can we dramatically increase the supply of transplant kidneys by using some that are hepatitis C infected, then eradicating the disease in the recipient? Peter Reese, MD, MSCE, and David S. Goldberg, MD, MSCE, report via early data that the answer appears to be yes.

“Instead of shooting arrows in the dark to find a drug that would be beneficial, we can now make an informed choice about the beneficial and harmful effects of pharmacological inhibition of a wide range of pathways,” comments Danish Saleheen, MBBS, PhD, one of the lead authors of a major study in Nature this week. An international research collaborative team studied more than 1,800 individuals who carried loss-of-function mutations in both copies of their genes, so-called “human knockouts."

Depression is common during the transition to menopause, but which women are most at risk for major depressive disorder? Mary Sammel, PhD, co-authored a new study that shows those who experience multiple traumatic events early on are more than twice as likely, during perimenopause.

The latest Testosterone Trial results, published in JAMA and JAMA Internal Medicine, include findings on cognition, bone health, heart health and anemia. Susan Ellenberg, PhD, commented that the treatment is not likely to be a magic bullet for patients, but that it may lead to improvements for them in some areas—bone density, in particular.

The Testosterone Trials’ latest results, published in JAMA and JAMA Internal Medicine, show that testosterone treatment for men over age 65 who have low levels of the hormone offers some benefits and not others. Co-author Susan Ellenberg, PhD, commented, “I don’t think anybody would interpret these results as saying, ‘Wow, this is a fountain of youth.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer chronicles the research of Daniel Rader, MD, and Danish Saleheen, MD, into the role that cholesterol and triglycerides play in human biology—and how that in turn applies to clinical cardiology.

Adults with severe psoriasis are more than twice as likely to experience vertebral fractures, Alexis Ogdie, MD, and colleagues report in Annals of Rheumatic Disease.