personalized medicine

Metabolic Inflexibility Drives Increased Appetite

IRP Research Could Aid Personalized Weight Loss Recommendations

person eating an over-sized burger

We all know the stereotype of the picky child who shuns vegetables unless they’re smothered in ranch dressing or cheese. Surprisingly, the human body can also be similarly choosy about how it fuels itself. New IRP research shows that people whose bodies prefer to raid their sugar depots rather than use stored fat during a period without food consume more calories after their fast, suggesting a possible explanation for why some people are more prone to gaining weight over time or have less success with certain weight loss interventions.

Software Tool Guides Breast Cancer Care

IRP’s Jinani Jayasekera Hopes to Help Women Make Medical Decisions

doctor using a tablet to access medical software

The women in our lives deserve flowers and thanks on Mother’s Day, but they also deserve attention to their well-being. This past Sunday, May 12, marked the start of Women’s Health Week, a time to reflect on the decisions women make to look after their own health.

For instance, breast cancer treatments are something no woman wants to think about, but every year about 240,000 newly diagnosed women in the U.S. face high-stakes decisions about what medical interventions to pursue. IRP Stadtman investigator Jinani Jayasekera, Ph.D., and her colleagues in the IRP’s Health Equity and Decision Sciences (HEADS) lab develop software-based clinical decision-making tools to help women and their doctors assess and address their health risks when choosing treatments.

Double Trouble for Alcohol-Associated Liver Disease

IRP Researchers Identify Two Types of Liver Damage and a Possible Treatment for One

fatty liver

While alcohol is a source of celebration and relaxation for many, it does come with significant drawbacks, especially when people over-consume it. For people who have trouble controlling their alcohol consumption — a condition called alcohol use disorder (AUD) — one of the most dangerous consequences can be damage to the liver, the organ that filters toxins like alcohol out of the blood.

In honor of Alcohol Awareness Month this April, I spoke with IRP senior investigator Bin Gao, M.D., Ph.D., about his quest to understand how AUD damages the liver and other organs by uncovering the molecules and mechanisms involved in that damage. His IRP lab also investigates how alcohol is processed in the body, producing insights that could be used to identify strategies for reducing alcohol consumption or reversing alcohol’s harmful effects.

Genetic Sequencing Solves Drug Reaction Mystery

Immune System Genes Linked to Severe Side Effects in Patients with Rare Disease

computer monitor showing the results of DNA sequencing

When you run the largest-ever study of a rare childhood disease, you become the go-to person when your peers notice something peculiar in patients with the illness. It was not too surprising, then, when a researcher from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, asked IRP investigator Michael Ombrello, M.D., to help her team follow a new lead in the mystery of why some patients with a rare inflammatory condition called Still’s disease were coming down with a life-threatening lung ailment. The results of their collaboration could lead to a new precision medicine approach that individualizes therapy for Still’s disease based on patients’ DNA.