Schoolteachers who underwent a short but intensive program of meditation were less depressed, anxious or stressed -- and more compassionate and aware of others' feelings, according to a UCSF-led study that blended ancient meditation practices with the most current scientific methods for regulating emotions. A core feature of many religions, meditation is practiced by tens of millions around the world as... (read more)
Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to receive opioids for pain if they have mental health disorders, particularly posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), researchers said. Those with PTSD were nearly three times as likely to receive opioids for their pain as those without any mental health conditions (RR 2.58, 95% CI 2.49 to 2.67), Karen Seal, MD, MPH, of the VA Medical Center at the... (read more)
A UCSF stem cell study conducted in mice suggests a novel strategy for treating damaged cardiac tissue in patients following a heart attack. The approach potentially could improve cardiac function, minimize scar size, lead to the development of new blood vessels -- and avoid the risk of tissue rejection. n the investigation, reported online in the journal PLoS ONE, the researchers iso... (read more)
Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute, Scripps Health, and collaborating cancer physicians have successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of an advanced blood test for detecting and analyzing circulating tumor cells (CTCs) -- breakaway cells from patients' solid tumors -- from cancer patients. The findings, reported in five new papers, show that the highly sensitive blood analysis provides information t... (read more)
Bone loss and osteoporosis develop so slowly in most women whose bones test normal at age 65 that many can safely wait as long as 15 years before having a second bone density test, researchers report in a new study. The study, published in today’s issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, is part of a broad rethinking of how to diagnose and treat the potentially debilitating bone disease that can lead to broken h... (read more)
Reporting in the journal Science, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, MO, have discovered that the worm lacks a key cellular structure called a "centrosome," which scientists have considered essential for cell division. Every animal ever examined, from the... (read more)
A UCSF study shows a popular treatment for a potentially blinding eye infection is just as effective if given every six months versus annually. This randomized study on trachoma, the leading cause of infection-caused blindness in the world, could potentially treat twice the number of patients using the same amount of medication. "The idea is we can do more with less," said Bruce Gaynor, MD, assista... (read more)
The immune system possesses a type of cell that can be activated by tissues within the body to remind the immune system not to attack our own molecules, cells and organs, UCSF researchers have discovered. The discovery is likely to lead to new strategies for fighting a range of autoimmune diseases -- in which the immune system attacks and harms specific molecules and cells within us -- as well ... (read more)
Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have identified a protein that kick-starts the response to low levels of oxygen, suggesting new lines of research relevant to a variety of potentially fatal disorders associated with diminished oxygen supply, including cancer, heart disease, stroke and other neurological conditions that affect millions of people worldwide. In a paper being pu... (read more)
More than half of women who are screened annually for breast cancer will get a false positive result within 10 years of their first mammogram, according to a UCSF study that throws more fuel on the controversy over when, and how often, women should be tested. That rate of false positives, higher than previous studies have shown, applies to women whether they start getting mammograms in their 40s or 50s. ... (read more)
Eating eggs may increase men's risk of developing the more lethal form of prostate cancer, concluded US researchers in a study published recently in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. First author Erin L. Richman from the department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and colle... (read more)
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is one of the world's leading centers of health sciences research, patient care, and education. UCSF's medical, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, and graduate schools are among the top health science professional schools in the world. The UCSF Medical Center is consistently ranked among the top 10 hospitals in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. Some of UCSF's most renowned treatment centers include kidney transplant and liver transplantation, radiology, neurosurgery, neurology, oncology, ophthalmology, gene therapy, women's health, fetal surgery, pediatrics, and internal medicine. Further, U.S. New & World Report ranked UCSF’s medical school specialty program in AIDS medical care first in the country. Collaborations with African Universities such as the University of Zimbabwe to deal with HIV have been established. UCSF is administered separately from Hastings College of Law, another UC institution located in San Francisco. In recent years, UCSF and UC Hastings have increased their collaboration, including the formation of the UCSF/Hastings Consortium on Law, Science, and Health Policy.
Founded in 1873, the mission of UCSF is to serve as a "public university dedicated to saving lives and improving health." Though one of the ten campuses of the University of California, it is unique for being the only University of California campus dedicated solely to graduate education, and this in health and biomedical sciences. UCSF has developed a reputation for unique interdisciplinary collaboration between the health science disciplines which has led to some of the most important discoveries in the biosciences. The graduate-focused environment of UCSF, its relatively small size, and its culture of collaboration allows for a flexibility to translate new discoveries into new treatments hard to find even at many of the world's other top medical centers.
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