Health Sciences In The Media

Scientists have found Pima County’s first case of the Delta variant, a new, highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. “At this point I’m still not alarmed that the Delta variant is going to have a major impact here in Arizona,” said Dr. Joe Gerald, an associate professor and director of the public health policy and management program at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.

The College of Medicine – Tucson is offering a new Bachelor of Science in Medicine degree. "My overall hope is that we provide something that students really, really like. We want to give something that will be another option for students to say 'hey I want to try some of this or look at it.' I hope that it helps with student's decisions as far as career," said Todd Vanderah, PhD, head of the Department of Pharmacology.

Researchers at the University of Arizona Cancer Center's Skin Cancer Institute are spending countless hours researching new medicines to battle melanoma. “Ultimately the things I’m doing are experimental. I'm the guy who tries to come up with novel weapons on a molecular basis,” said Georg Wondrak, a professor at the College of Pharmacy and a research member at the UArizona Cancer Center.

New studies suggest that teens and preteens may be cooling on vapes. Ivo Abraham, a professor at the College of Pharmacy, sees “some signals of growing awareness that this is not healthy.”

Frank A. von Hippel, a professor of environmental health sciences in the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, and Joe Schwarcz of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, discuss the unknown environmental and health ramifications from harmful chemicals.

The Novavax vaccine differs from other Covid-19 vaccines because it already has the spike protein of the virus but it cannot cause the actual disease. ”I would love to see that vaccine here, it’s much more easily stored and transported, it would make it a lot easier to get that type of vaccine out to the rest of the world as well,” said Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunobiologist at the College of Medicine – Tucson.

While Caucasions are 20 times more likely to develop melanoma than people of color, the reality is when it's diagnosed in people of color it’s typically in the deadliest of stages. "The rate for melanoma is now 30 per 100,000 in Arizona compared to 22.7 per 100,000 in the United States as a whole," said Robin Harris, a professor at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and co-director of the Skin Cancer Institute at the UArizona Cancer Center.

Menopause’s effects on the brain are often temporary, according to a new study. But there’s a caution for women at risk of Alzheimer’s.

Mean sleep duration increased in 2020 by 5 to 11 minutes in nearly all groups studied, according to an analysis of Fitbit data from more than 163,000 users in six major U.S. cities "particularly hard hit" by the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was also interesting to see that the degree of change in sleep was correlated with the degree of improvement in resting heart rate," said Michael Grandner, PhD, director of the Sleep and Health Research Program and associate professor at the College of Medicine – Tucson.

A $15.3 million grant will fund research to study Hispanic children’s susceptibility to asthma in Tucson, compared to Nogales, Sonora, where it is much less prevalent. “We have a very significant asthma epidemic in the United States, and many children who develop asthma can be burdened for a lifetime. My goal is to prevent asthma in children by building their immune system,” said Dr. Fernando Martinez, director of the UArizona Health Sciences Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center.