Children in Detroit are getting the chance to find out what it's like to go to medical school. Dr. Carolyn King is one of the founders of Co-founder of the Reach out to Youth Program at Wayne State University and hopes to inspire the next generation of young doctors. The program, which began in 1990, encourages kids ages seven through eleven to consider careers in medicine. "In order for us to know who we can be, we have to see that role model in front of us, otherwise, we think the only thing there is to be that's passion-filled is an athlete or a superstar," said King. Second-year medical students who were a part of the program spoke about the importance of young children seeing those with similar ethnic backgrounds or genders reaching some of the highest levels in the medical field. "I really believe that representation is super important, especially in the field of medicine, where we don't have many black doctors or many brown doctors," said medical student Lyndsay Archer "So making sure that we just inspire the next generation to know that this field is something that they can do and that they can thrive in is super important."

By Cara Murez  Costs for epilepsy medications in the United States are skyrocketing, outpacing inflation and straining federal insurers Medicare and Medicaid, according to new research. Spending on antiseizure medications more than doubled in eight years for the government insurers, largely because of third-generation and brand-name drugs, the study found. "While it's very important that Medicare and Medicaid patients have access to these drugs, the cost to the system is significant and continues to rise each year," said Dr. Deepti Zutshi, lead study author and an associate professor of neurology at Wayne State University in Detroit. "The answer is not to remove access to the medications but consider ways to cap or head off costs so we can continue to ensure the longevity of Medicare and Medicaid," she said.  

By Mike Wilkinson  As Michigan and the nation are just weeks from beginning the fourth year of COVID-19, the signs are remarkably positive, according to new state data released Monday and Tuesday. For the first time since July, Michigan hospitals are treating fewer than 1,000 COVID-19 positive patients. New confirmed cases fell this week to the lowest level since April. The coronavirus positive test rate is now the lowest since May. The good news is widespread: hospitalizations have declined in every region in Michigan after hitting a recent high, state records show. But as Thanksgiving and the holidays approach, other data shows that the virus remains a threat: the state reported 223 deaths on Tuesday, the most since February. Though the deaths spanned several months, including 158 in November and 61 in October, they underscore that the virus is still taking lives daily across Michigan. Among that hardest hit: older residents and those who are unvaccinated or are not fully boosted. “It is very stark,” said Dr. Phil Levy, an emergency medicine physician at Detroit Receiving Hospital and a Wayne State University researcher. “If you’re not up-to-date (on vaccinations) you are exposing yourself to substantial risk.” 

By Irving Mejia-Hilario  Tens of millions of pounds of tiny pieces of plastic called ‘microplastics’ enter the Great Lakes each year. Exposure is linked to learning and memory issues in animals; researchers fear similar effects on humans. Experts say minor policy changes like banning microbeads are inadequate to combat the issue. Microplastics come from various sources, including litter like nurdles and water bottles, as well as wear-and-tear on the plastic products that seem ubiquitous in everyday life. Polyester fleece blankets and shirts release plastic into wastewater with every wash. Car tires emit a plastic dust as they wear against road surfaces. Though scientists have been tracking microplastics in the ocean since the 1970s, their 2013 discovery in the Great Lakes raised a new alarm. The lakes provide drinking water for 40 million people in the U.S. and Canada, while supporting an entire food web that sustains commercial, tribal, and recreational fishing economies. Fears of a looming crisis in the Great Lakes prompted researchers from Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University to host a roundtable discussion in May to discuss the growing threat. They fear society is disregarding a major environmental and health hazard, said Rodrigo Fernandez-Valdivia, an assistant professor in the School of Medicine at Wayne State University who spoke at the meeting. “At some point, this may overcome us, as humans,” Fernandez-Valdivia said. “We need to not finger-point at countries and regions, and recognize that this is a global problem.” 

By Kalie VanDewater and Ira Winer  During their lifetime, one in 70 women will receive a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, which is the second most common gynecologic cancer in the United States, according to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Among these, 15% to 30% will have platinum-resistant or refractory ovarian cancer, data show. Although the FDA granted fast track designation to a combination therapy for platinum-resistant disease in May, studies are still ongoing to identify other potential treatment options. Healio spoke with Ira Winer, MD, PhD, an associate professor in the division of gynecologic oncology at Wayne State University in Detroit, to learn more about what treatments show the most promise for platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. “Taking a step back, ovarian cancer in general can be a difficult disease to treat. This is largely due to the fact that it is a difficult disease to recognize and diagnose because the symptoms can be vague and are often mild. Once a patient is diagnosed with ovarian cancer, they will be treated with platinum-based chemotherapies combined with surgery up front. Maintenance strategies are also utilized to prevent recurrent disease,” said Winer. “Unfortunately, still, approximately 80% of patients will recur ultimately. Once platinum resistance is identified, very few conventional agents offer significant response as the disease becomes resistant to prototypical/conventional DNA-damaging agents. 

By Sarah Grimmer Activists in Detroit have called for a third-party mental health response team. Dr. Gerald Sheiner, a psychiatrist at Sinai-Grace Hospital and professor at Wayne State University, agrees. “Mental health care is at a crisis state in our city and across the country,” Sheiner said. Dr. Sheiner responds to mental health patients at the hospital and says when those patients are having their worst moments, the presence of weapons or intimidating personnel often makes the situation worse. “Patients who experience those type of difficulties are often frightened and think that everyone else is out to do them harm,” he said. “Mental health professionals are the best fit personnel to respond to mental health crisis, but mental health professionals are not available.” With a lack of a mental health response team, Detroit police have been responding to the uptick in mental health calls. The department is responding to an average of 64 mental health runs per day, more than three times as many as in 2020. “64 calls a day is beyond the ability of emergency services to care for in many instances,’ said Sheiner. DPD has been partnering with the Detroit Wayne Integrated Crisis Intervention Team for training and are working with activists and elected officials to create a non-police response program to address non-violent mental health calls. “I think that a straight up mental health response presents someone to intervene who is less threatening to a patient and someone who intervenes who has more experience dealing with a patient in crisis,” said Sheiner.

There are hidden metabolic health impacts in things that most people encounter every day. From surface cleaners to silicone wristbands, from fracking fluids to wastewater – even household dust – these diverse environmental mixtures have a potential to disrupt human health. Christopher Kassotis, an assistant professor in the Wayne State University School of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology and Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, has received a $598,487 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take a deeper dive into evaluating environmental mixtures. “Anything we know about chemical toxicity is based on testing that individual chemical, but we are never exposed to just one single chemical alone,” Kassotis said. “Humans are regularly exposed to hundreds or thousands of chemicals every day. Our regulatory system completely ignores this, in part due to difficulties sorting out how to examine mixtures and predict effects.”  

By Jena Brooker Detroit is a national leader for the most preterm births – and Wayne State University is setting up a new research center to collect more data on why. WSU in September received an $11.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate how one type of air pollution – volatile organic compounds, or VOCs – contribute to preterm births. The five-year grant has funded the formation of the Center for Leadership in Environmental Awareness and Research (CLEAR), where researchers will study the link between VOCs and adverse birth and health outcomes. “There really hasn’t been a significant body of work that’s been done till this point in time trying to understand the environmental link to that [preterm birth] rate,” said Carol Miller, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Wayne State and co-leader of the new center. Melissa Runge-Morris, a physician and co-leader of CLEAR, said the medical field is lagging in its understanding of how environmental factors contribute to health outcomes compared to lifestyle and genetic factors. “As far as environmental exposures, all of medicine is playing catch up,” she said. “We’re no different here in Detroit.”

By Karen Drew  It’s been a year-long investigation exposing poor record keeping, decomposing bodies and delays in contacting families of the dead at the Wayne County Morgue. Local 4’s Karen Drew, who led the year-long investigation of issue at the Wayne County Morgue, sat down with the new leadership, Wayne State University’s School of Medicine. Wayne State University School of Medicine has taken over the Wayne County Morgue with a 5-year, $70 million contract. Dean Dr. Wael Sakr discussed how he plans to address issues at the morgue, including an aggressive recruitment campaign to hire more medical examiners, improved record keeping and more. “We’re going to fix that [record keeping] through our software and data management, we are implementing the most current, modern version of it by the end of the month,” Dr. Sakr said. In a rare and surprising move, the new leadership allowed Local 4 cameras inside the medical examiner’s office. “Beyond just autopsies, and toxicology and histology. But how can we improve the health of the people in Wayne County? We can do that through the medical examiner’s office. There is data that we can utilize to really help us from a population health perspective,” said Thane Peterson, vice dean for finance and administration at the School of Medicine.  

A number of young children are being hospitalized because of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and it’s happening at an unusual time of year and among older children than in years past. The current RSV outbreak is different from previous outbreaks in several ways: It’s happening in the fall rather than the winter; older children and not just infants are being hospitalized; and cases are occurring that are more serious than in previous years. “The theory is that everyone’s now back together, and this is a rebound phenomenon,” said Jeffrey Kline, a physician and associate chair of research for emergency medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine. Kline runs a national surveillance network that gathers data about viral infections from about 70 hospitals, including four pediatric hospitals. He says those data show that 318 children were hospitalized with acute respiratory illness brought on by RSV in the week starting Oct. 9, compared with 45 hospitalizations in the week starting July 25. “If we think about the relative increase – ninefold increase – that’s not nothing, especially in the pediatric [emergency departments],” Kilne said.   

It’s that time of year when we celebrate something we usually hate: fear. We visit haunted houses and corn mazes or binge-watch the scariest horror movies. But our relationship with fear is complicated. In its most primitive form, fear is about survival – it raises our heart rates, redirects our blood flow, makes us faster and fiercer, all so we can face – or escape – serious threats. In other settings – where there’s no real danger – fear can feel exhilarating, fun, and exciting. It can serve as a form of entertainment, or even help us focus and perform better. Arash Javanbakht, a trauma psychiatrist who is also the director of the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic (STARC) at Wayne State University, explains the purpose of our primitive fear circuitry, how it fits into modern life, and why we crave scary experiences. “Imagine – if the fear system was instilled in us, we need to practice it. When you’re watching a horror movie, what are you practicing?...You’re constantly, in your mind, practicing ways of surviving. In that sense, these scary experiences are kind of a practice of ‘how I would survive if this happened to me’ but we do it in a safe environment…” 

For the Rev. Nick Hood III, the recently unveiled Black Bottom mural at the Wayne State University School of Medicine brings back a flood of memories. It's a tangible reminder of the historic neighborhood he called home. Hood is a former Detroit city councilman and Black Bottom resident, and his one of hundreds of stories behind the mural. The Black Bottom neighborhood was dismantled when Detroit wanted to build freeways, and took the land from the Black population to do so. Despite all the books about Black Bottom, despite the family conversations and stories about lineage rooted in the community, the 375-foot mural is the first permanent marker of the historic neighborhood, Hood says. The mural, which sits on the south side of Canfield Street near WSU's North Hall, pays homage to Black Detroiters' contributions to the area of medicine. "I've never seen it, anything like it," Hood said. "The significance of it is going to transcend this moment." The mural, a joint project between the College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts, features nine historical figures, and one future medical student to symbolize the future. Among those honored is Ossian Sweet, who purchased a home in an all-white Detroit neighborhood that defined race relations in Detroit; Marjorie Peebles-Meyers, the first Black woman to graduate from Wayne College of Medicine; Dr. Robert Greenidge, a founder of Parkside Hospital and David and D.L. Northcross, a set of entrepreneurs who started Mercy General Hospital in 1917 and Barthwell, the pharmacist. "The mural is playing this incredible role in providing students, and future students, with strong role models who reflect the diversity of the city and the campus. It just shows you the power of art to transform a neighborhood," said Sheryl Oring, art and art history chair at Wayne State University. "That's one thing art also does: It draws people in, gets people to ask questions and maybe play a role in healing. There were so many difficult things in the history of Detroit and I hope that the mural can play a role in healing."   

By Jack Rodolico     Dr. Arash Javenbakht, a trauma psychiatrist who is also the director of the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic (STARC) at Wayne State University, joins in a conversation about why people sometimes deliberately seek out the things that scare them and fear of things in the natural world. “Patients come to my office and say, ‘I know it’s stupid, but I’m afraid of this…’ and I tell them it’s not stupid, it’s illogical. Fear has to be fast and illogical because logic is slow,”  he said. Dr. Javenbakht describes what goes on in the brain when we experience fear. “There’s an almond-shaped part of the brain near the temporal lobe right near the ear called the amygdala. It’s job, anytime you see something, is to determine the salience…very primitive basic functions of human survival…”    

Psychiatrists have found that one of the most effective ways of treating patients with phobias is to expose them to the very thing they are afraid of. Exposure therapy, as it’s called, is unique in that in order to help someone who is afraid of snakes, for example, you’d have to bring a live snake into the office. Dr. Arash Javanbakht, director of the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic (STARC) at Wayne State University, started a project about seven years ago to work around bringing reptiles into the office. The project sought to help confront their fears through a new type of exposure therapy, conducted solely through augmented reality, or AR. This study aims to help patients with phobias confront their instinctual fears by creating technology that could insert lifelike visuals of what they feared in their environment. Patients can put on a headset and see the same room they saw before, just with the addition of their fears – in the case of this study, spiders. Javanbakht says, “this could definitely be a big part of the future of the psychiatric field.”   

By Julie Walker After two decades of providing care in the Sinai-Grace emergency room, nurse Josephine Quaye-Molex has embraced a new way of connecting with patients. In late July, the venue was a van parked outside Immanuel Grace AME Church on Conner. Quaye-Molex joined the Wayne Health Mobile Unit about a year ago and said the ease of access has been reassuring for those who often have felt dismissed or mistrustful of doctors in traditional healthcare settings. The mobile units, she said, are meeting residents where they are and, in turn, building trust in the community. The setting also gives Quaye-Molex a chance to offer more feedback than the hospital’s ER might typically allow. “I get a lot more time to be able to sit and talk with my patients, or whoever it is that has approached,” she said. “They don’t necessarily have to get services, they just may have questions, and I’m able to answer those questions now.” Born out of necessity during the early peaks of the pandemic, some of the most vocal advocates behind mobile health said they are hopeful that the concept will alleviate barriers to healthcare access and increase trust in underserved communities like Detroit. Dr. Phillip Levy, who practices emergency room medicine at DMC Sinai-Grace Hospital and leads the WSU and Wayne Health Mobile Unit program, is hopeful that they will help revolutionize medicine in at least two ways; easing access to care and preventing serious diseases before they start. Levy says five factors – high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, high cholesterol and obesity – contribute to 80% of chronic illnesses in the country, especially heart disease. Levy’s findings resulted in a grant and Wayne State University supported efforts to turn that data into a tool. The tool, coined PHOENIX, is intended to be used by community members and healthcare professionals to identify and curb risk factors before they turn into deadly disease. “At the end of the day, we’re going to affect the most people by screening for the most common disorders and diseases and fixing those problems,” Dr. Levy said. 

A non-opioid animal tranquilizer for which there is no antidote is being mixed into Michigan street drugs, making the already deadly supply more dangerous, according to toxicologists and researchers. Xylazine, a fast-acting central nervous system depressant that is not approved for human use, is showing up largely in fentanyl, the ultra-potent synthetic opioid that is mixed into heroin and pressed into counterfeit pills and responsible for more overdose deaths than any other drug. Adding xylazine to fentanyl, which is also a depressant, increases the already high odds of overdose. In Michigan, xylazine has turned up in toxicology screenings of almost 200 people who have died from drug overdoses since 2019, said Varun Vohra, who is director of the Michigan Poison and Drug Information Center at Wayne State University.  

By Louis Aguilar If things go as planned, the area north of downtown Detroit will see the rise of four major new university and medical projects that could greatly expand the power of “Eds and Meds” in the city. Eds and Meds refer to higher educational institutions like Wayne State University and such medical facilities as Henry Ford Health System and the Detroit Medical Center. The three are part of an economic engine that helps drive Midtown, something the four Eds and Meds projects would bolster further. Michigan State University is planning to locate a new medical school near Henry Ford Health’s headquarters that would be a major boost to the New Center area. The University of Michigan’s new business school venture with billionaire Stephen M. Ross on land donated by the Ilitch organization’s Olympia Development of Michigan would breathe new hope into the Ilitch group’s long-deferred dream of transforming blocks of land north of downtown in what is called District Detroit. The other projects include a new theater and dance complex and jazz center at Wayne State and a new cancer research center and medical school facility by Wayne State University’s School of Medicine and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute somewhere near the DMC or WSU’s main campus. The projects also set up potential competition for funding among Michigan’s top three research universities on Wayne State’s home turf. But one urban development expert expects the strong track records of the institutions in raising money not to result in a loss of money for Wayne State. Dr. Wael Sakr, dean of the Wayne State University School of Medicine, acknowledged the competition with UM and MSU for money, but also expressed faith in the strength of WSU’s plans for the Karmanos Cancer Institute. “We have an experienced team of fundraisers that is working intensely on the funding,” he said. WSU President M. Roy Wilson stated earlier that the university would also consider raising money through bonds for the School of Medicine/Karmanos venture. The Karmonos Cancer Institute’s elite designation will likely help raise money from new and national funders. “There may be more competition, but each of these plans can be successful,” said John Mogk, a distinguished service professor of law at Wayne State who has followed urban planning issues for decades and has been an adviser on numerous urban development projects in Detroit and around the state. “All of these projects can show the tremendous benefits and impact they will bring to the community,” Mogk said. “Every institution involved has a proven track record. Projects that have a great chance of being a success usually find the money they need.”