UBC Medicine

Rare disease actually isn’t so rare. It’s generally defined as a genetic malady affecting one out of every 2,000 or more people. But that is still too small a percentage to attract the attention of the traditional research establishment — unless there is some incentive. Two young faculty members in the Department of Medical Genetics [...]

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It’s now pretty clear that misfolded proteins are the cause of “mad cow disease.” Neil Cashman, a Professor in the Division of Neurology, believes those toxic molecules also play a role in other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS. But for all the credibility that Dr. Cashman brings to the game (one of his [...]

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For the past year or so, the term “medical isotopes” has been surfacing in news reports with increasing regularity, and for good reason: the supply of those decaying atoms, which are the necessary ingredients for cardiac and bone scans, has been choked off. Canada’s medical facilities have long depended on a single nuclear reactor in Ontario to get the [...]

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After years of hard work, Dr. Andrei Krassioukov has finally earned admission to the Athletes Village at the 2010 Vancouver Paralympic Games. Krassioukov isn’t a competitor — he’s an internationally recognized expert in spinal cord injury (SCI) and leader of the only research team to be granted access to the Vancouver Athletes Village during the Games. [...]

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Sometimes scientific progress is just as much about disproving something as it is about discovering something new. A recent study by Psychiatry Professor Weihong Song, an expert in Alzheimer’s disease, is a case in point. He set out to replicate previous findings by other researchers that a compound found in marijuana could blunt or even [...]

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Teresa Liu-Ambrose, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, has shown that weight-training by seniors can improve executive cognitive function — the ability to make accurate decisions quickly. In an article published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, she found that a year of once- or twice-weekly resistance training made a difference among [...]

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UBC has been ranked No. 3 worldwide in research of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to Thomson Reuters’ website, ScienceWatch.com. The site based its rankings on total citations to scientific papers during the past decade; UBC came in just behind the University of London and Harvard University. ScienceWatch.com said, “Imagery of the lung is a big [...]

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Brain fitness for aging boomers has achieved official status as a craze, feeding a growing industry of books, software and workshops. But most of the story has already been laid down long before the first sign of wrinkles or gray hair — even before the first day of kindergarten. Researchers at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine [...]

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Three decades into the women’s health movement, Dr. Larry Goldenberg, Head of the Department of Urologic Sciences, is hoping to replicate its success with the other half of the population. On Nov. 17, he launched the Men’s Health Initiative of BC, a project aimed at bringing together the best research about men’s health and disseminating it to [...]

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Whether they work in labs or rehabiliation units, scientists in the UBC Faculty of Medicine are making headway in understanding and treating stroke — the devastating condition caused by a sudden decrease in blood flow to the brain, and the leading cause of serious long-term disability in older adults. In the Psychiatry Department, Brian MacVicar is leading [...]

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