Volume 27 • No. 4
Questions answered on informed-consent policy
Revision to professoriate changes result in new "adjunct faculty" designation
New policy clarifies decision-making on admission of ED patients
Patient safety program cited as national model
Architect of Trauma Program navigated his career through twists and turns
Momentum builds with construction projects
Below are selected highlights of recent medical research
conducted at Stanford Medical Center.
Detailed news releases are available on the Internet at
http://mednews.stanford.edu
DISEASE BY GENETIC CHANCE. New research by Neil Risch, professor of genetics, statistics and health research and policy, and colleagues found that random genetic chance, not selection, played the primary role as the cause of certain genetic diseases in Ashkenazi Jews. The findings appeared in the March online edition of the American Journal of Human Genetics and in the April print edition of the magazine. The researchers concluded that the founders of the Ashkenazi Jewish population had disease mutations and passed them along to their children, and because they tended to marry within their own group, those mutations remained common. Some disease mutations unusually common in Ashkenazi Jews include Tay-Sachs disease, high cholesterol, hemophilia and some forms of breast cancer.
ADDICTIVE DRUG LINK. Researchers at Stanford have found that cocaine, morphine, amphetamines, nicotine and alcohol all cause dopamine-producing neurons in the brain to become more sensitive to the brain chemical glutamate. They found that stress also caused these neurons to become more sensitive to glutamate, while non-addictive drugs affecting the brain did not trigger the same response. The findings - reported in the Feb. 20 issue of Neuron by Robert Malenka, the Pritzker professor of psychiatry, and postdoctoral fellows working in his lab - showed that addictive drugs as well as stress bring about these changes but through different means. The research, which represents an early step toward understanding how addictive drugs affect the brain, is aimed at finding how to block the addictive effects of drugs without impairing the normal role of dopamine-producing neurons in learning and memory.
TASTER GENE IDENTIFIED. Researchers have identified the gene responsible for the ability to taste phenylthiocarbamide and have found variations within the gene. These genetic variations lead some people to be "tasters" and others to be "nontasters" in biological taste tests, such as those commonly given in high school and college science classes. The researchers sequenced the PTC gene in all the people in their study sample and found three genetic changes that related to whether the people were tasters. Each of these genetic changes caused a molecular switch in the protein made by the gene, they found. Besides giving choosy eaters an excuse for their pickiness, the research could shed light on human genetic diversity. The findings by Neil Risch, professor of genetics, and colleagues appeared in the Feb. 22 issue of Science.
