Vaibhav Diwadkar, professor of psychiatry, and Otto Muzik, professor of pediatrics and radiology wrote an article for The Conversation about how the body responds to cold exposure. “There are people who show incredible resistance to extremes of temperature. Think of Buddhist monks who can calmly withstand being draped in freezing towels or the so-called “Iceman” Wim Hof, who can remain submerged in ice water for long periods of time without trouble. These people tend to be viewed as superhuman or special in some way. If they truly are, then their feats are simply entertaining but irrelevant vaudevillian acts. What if they’re not freaks, though, but have trained their brains and bodies with self-modification techniques that give them cold resistance? Could anyone do the same? As two neuroscientists who have studied how the human brain responds to exposure to cold, we are intrigued by what happens in the brain during such resistance. Our research, and that of others, is beginning to suggest these kinds of “superpowers” may indeed result from systematically practicing techniques that modify one’s brain or body. These modifications may be relevant for behavioral and mental health, and can potentially be harnessed by anyone.”

Arash Javanbakht, assistant professor of psychiatry, wrote an article for The Conversation about post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. “PTSD is common, affecting 8 percent of the U.S. population, up to 30 percent of the combat exposed veterans, and 30-80 percent of refugees and victims of torture. A brain scan is a general term that covers a diverse group of methods for imaging the brain. In psychiatric clinical practice, brain scans are mostly used to rule out visible brain lesions that may be causing psychiatric symptoms. However, in research we use them to learn about the pathologies of the brain in mental illness. 

Although it's still considered a rare cancer — comprising about 3 percent of all cancer cases — the incidence of pancreatic cancer has been steadily increasing for decades in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The higher number of cases can be attributed to a few factors, said Dr. Philip Philip, vice president of medical affairs at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Center and professor of oncology and pharmacology at the Wayne State University School of Medicine.

Michigan’s rural areas have high infant mortality and poor maternal health, fueled in part by substance abuse, lack of access to healthy food, and dwindling birthing hospitals and OB-GYNs. The root causes may be different from those in Michigan's urban communities, but the results are the same: Michigan's African-American and American Indian babies are three times likelier than white babies to die in their first year of life. Addiction is one of the biggest challenges for Michigan's rural mothers and infants. In Michigan’s rural areas, more pregnant women smoke cigarettes and abuse opioids than pregnant women in urban areas. "Cigarettes are the most commonly used substance during pregnancy and are at least as powerful a contributor to infant mortality as any of the other substances," says Dr. Steven Ondersma, a professor in Wayne State University's departments of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences and obstetrics and gynecology. 

Four Michigan universities have teamed up to develop a program offering upcoming medical graduates a $75,000 loan repayment to work in rural and urban underserved communities. Michigan Doctors, or MIDOC,  is a partnership between Wayne State University, Western Michigan University, Michigan State University and Central Michigan University. The program has developed select residency openings for graduating medical students. "There is fierce competition nationwide for a limited number of residency slots each year," said Jack D. Sobel, M.D., dean of the Wayne State University School of Medicine, in a statement. "We must find innovative ways to increase the number of resident training positions if we are to successfully meet the state and nation's growing needs for more physicians."

Arash Javanbakht, assistant professor of psychiatry, wrote an article about the murder of 50 people in New Zealand, which he described as “another tragic reminder of how humans are capable of heartlessly killing their own kind just based on what they believe, how they worship, and what race or nationality they belong to.” Javanbakht, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist specializing in fear and trauma, offers some evidence-based thoughts on how fear is abused in politics. 

The Michigan State Medical School's Detroit Street Care program and Wayne State University's Street Medicine Detroit are helping medical students see past stereotypes to build relationships between homeless people and medical professionals to improve their quality of care, put them in touch with other resources like housing, and overcome some of the structural problems that make being homeless in Detroit especially deadly. In the process, the students themselves are engaging in a form of back to basics medicine that puts patients first. These programs allow medical students to reach out to homeless people on the street, carrying backpacks with medicine and diagnostic equipment, as well as necessities like hats, gloves, and food. They also meet with patients at places like the Tumaini Center, working under the tutelage of other medical students, nurse practitioners and doctors. On the street, they go out with a "peer support specialist," a formerly homeless person who helps them approach people.  

Theresa A. Hastert, assistant professor in the Department of Oncology at Wayne State University School of Medicine, wrote an op-ed about the need to make healthcare more affordable. Hastert points out: “While Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA have expanded Americans’ access to health insurance coverage, it is no secret that our system has serious problems, and many still have trouble accessing care.” “The most fitting tribute to the late John Dingell, is to continue his decades-long legacy of improving Americans’ health and access to health care. His 60-year career in the House of Representatives included involvement in the most significant health care legislation in our nation’s history, including presiding over the House of Representatives in 1965 when it passed Medicare and sitting next to President Barack Obama when he signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010. 

In 2012, researchers published the results of a retrospective study looking at which candidates admitted to a otolaryngology residency program turned into the most successful clinicians as ranked by faculty. What they found was that those who got the highest faculty ratings were those with an “established excellence in a team sport.” While the researchers cautioned that not all residency program directors should rush to look for student-athletes, the study did isolate two traits of student-athletes that might translate into success in medicine: time management skills and teamwork. Indeed, it’s not specific athletic skills that matter, says M. Roy Wilson, M.D., president of Wayne State University and former chair of the AAMC Board of Directors, but the ability to juggle sport and academic responsibilities and excel at both. “Learning how to manage time efficiently is critical, and the main complaint that medical students have is just the volume of material they have to digest. So much of medicine is really about personality, or the ability to deal with people effectively and the ability to lead people. Those are characteristics we see in student-athletes who have been successful in team or individual sports.” 

Arash Javanbakht, assistant professor of psychiatry, wrote an article about dealing with life’s challenges that may instill fear and uncertainty in people. Javanbakht wrote: “As a psychiatrist specialized in anxiety and trauma, I often tell my patients and students that to understand how fear works in us, we have to see it in the context where it evolved. Ten thousand years ago, if another human frowned at us, chances were high one of us would be dead in a couple minutes. In the tribal life of our ancestors, if other tribe members did not like you, you would be dead, or exiled and dead. Biological evolution is very slow, but civilization, culture, society and technology evolve relatively fast. It takes around a million years for evolutionary change to happen in a species, and people have been around for about 200,000 years. 

Dr. David R. Rosenberg, professor and chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, psychiatrist in chief at Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center, wrote a letter to the editor. Our team at Wayne State University has developed innovative programs targeted at our most vulnerable and high-risk populations that both improve outcome and reduce cost. We have published these results in prestigious peer-reviewed journals demonstrating significant reductions in lengths of stays and repeat visits of behavioral patients in the ED, and a 94 percent reduction in inpatient psychiatric hospitalization from the ED.

Dr. David R. Rosenberg, professor and chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, psychiatrist in chief at Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center, wrote a letter to the editor. “As chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Wayne State University, I read and applaud the recent focus of Crain's on the growing behavioral health care crisis in our nation's emergency departments. Patients with serious emotional and behavioral problems in the emergency department remain the diagnostic and therapeutic orphans of the American health system. Sadly, in a system dominated by politics, posturing and "paying the bills," these patients are often short-changed. 

Corktown Health Center got $500,000 from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund to offer care and support for older LGBT adults. The Detroit health center is the first focused on LGBT health in Michigan, according to its website. The two-year grant will fund its Silver Rainbow Health Initiative, according to a news release. The program will be a collaborative effort between Corktown Health, SAGE Metro Detroit and the Wayne State University School of Medicine. SAGE Metro Detroit grew out of the LGBT Older Adult Coalition. It works to build awareness and change for elderly members of the LGBT community. The Corktown Health Center opened in 2017 in a renovated 24,000-square-foot facility at 1726 Howard St., aiming to alleviate a lack of LGBT-focused care in the area. It partnered with Wayne State University and the Wayne State University Physician Group late that year to increase its capacity and expand its resources. The health center's services include primary care, health insurance help, behavioral health, and comprehensive HIV care and treatment. Pharmacy services are coming soon, according to its website.

Acute flaccid myelitis is a rare but serious condition affecting the nervous system causing the muscles and reflexes in the body to become weak. While the condition or clinical manifestations of AFM are not new, the outbreak of cases that have been reported to the Center for Disease Control Prevention since 2014, when the agency began its surveillance for the condition, are new. "It's a clinical phenomenon that could be caused by a variety of causes," said Li, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Neurology and Scientific Director of Translational Neuroscience Initiative at Wayne State University. Li was among the doctors in Michigan who helped solve the mysteries surrounding West Nile, during its earliest outbreak in New York City. It was his research that produced scientific evidence showing that West Nile patients had damage to the spinal cord. "

January is National Blood Donor Month: a time to raise awareness on the importance of donating blood. According to Dr. Martin Bluth, professor of pathology with Wayne State University, blood is used every two seconds in the U.S., which is why there's a constant need. "The different kinds of products that are required for blood utilization -- whether it's red cells, or plasma, or platelets -- are in constant demand simply because there's a shelf life to them." he told WWJ's Deanna Lites.

As a psychiatrist specialized in anxiety and trauma, I often tell my patients and students that to understand how fear works in us, we have to see it in the context where it evolved. Ten thousand years ago, if another human frowned at us, chances were high one of us would be dead in a couple minutes. In the tribal life of our ancestors, if other tribe members did not like you, you would be dead, or exiled and dead.

Some of the same blood markers that spike following a heart attack also skyrocket in amateur long-distance runners, especially those who do a full marathon, researchers say. The small study in Spain tested non-professional runners before and after 10K, half-marathon and full-marathon races and found that a protein called troponin, which indicates damage to the heart muscle, surges to many times its normal level after a full marathon. It's not clear if this represents long-term damage, however, the study team writes in the journal Circulation. While deaths in long distance races are relatively rare, we shouldn't forget that the runner who sparked the marathon competitions, the Greek herald, Pheidippides, who in 490 BC ran a distance of about 26 miles from Marathon to Athens with the news of the victory his people had over the Persians died shortly after delivering that news, said Dr. James Glazier, a cardiologist at Detroit Medical Center and a clinical professor of medicine at Wayne State University, who wasn't involved in the study. The increase in troponin levels "suggests that marathons put quite a strain on the heart," Glazier said. "Other studies that looked at MRIs of the hearts of runners showed that they can become very enlarged after a race and we worry that with competitive running you might get some scarring of the heart and then maybe some rhythm problems."

Sonia Brown — known to many as "Auntie Na" — works with the Kresge Foundation and Wayne State University. She has created a health clinic, food pantry, clothing distribution center, and tutoring center called "Auntie Na's House." The “village,” as Brown refers to it, is on Yellowstone Street on Detroit's west side. “Our programs are community-based. It started off with just trying to help some of the young mothers in the community with day-to-day living and responsibilities: clothes and food," Brown said. Now, the program helps in a variety of ways including babysitting children, providing educational opportunities, and holding meet and greets for neighbors.

Arash Javanbakht, assistant professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University, wrote an article for The Conversation on the social consequences of mass gun violence.  “I am a trauma and anxiety researcher and clinician psychiatrist, and I know that the effects of such violence are far-reaching. While the immediate survivors are most affected, the rest of society suffers, too.”

Residents of Wayne County are the unhealthiest of Michigan's 83 counties, according to a ranking by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Bridging that disparity was the target of a Wednesday summit at Wayne State University. Participants suggested ways to promote healthy eating, behaviors and environments. But the focus was on disparities affecting Detroit’s population, including asthma, heart disease, diabetes and obesity. The university brought together leaders of corporations, health care systems,  community organizations, foundations, policymakers and academics.