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University of Washington School of Medicine
Online News
Vol. 12, No. 15
April 11, 2008
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To view an archived version of Online News on the UW
Medicine Web site, visit:
http://www.uwmedicine.org/Global/NewsAndEvents/somnews/index.htm
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This week’s news:
* Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation kicks off with first board meeting, open house, and research symposium
* Repeated methamphetamine use causes long-term adaptation in mouse brain, UW researchers find
* School of Medicine and Office of Multicultural Affairs launch Hispanic Health Pathway for medical students
* Michael Chin and Andrew Scharenberg nominated for American Society for Clinical Investigation; Brent Wisse, Neil Josephson, and Robert Richard elected to Western Society for Clinical Investigation
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INSTITUTE FOR HEALTH METRICS AND EVALUATION DEBUTS TO THE PUBLIC
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the UW, the new institute evaluating health programs around the world, debuted to the public this week with its first board meeting, an open house, and a research conference. The IHME was created last summer as an independent research institute at the UW, led by director Chris Murray, UW professor of global health, and overseen by an international board.
The IHME was created to conduct rigorous, independent analysis of global health conditions and health systems, and to provide high-quality information about population health. The institute is aimed at helping researchers, donors, policymakers, and health practitioners have better information available as they allocate the limited resources that are available for global health programs.
The IHME held its first public board meeting and an open house on Wednesday at its new offices near downtown Seattle, at 2301 5th Ave. The institute is also holding a research conference in Seattle this week, Global Health Metrics and Evaluation: Current State and Future Directions. The conference, which is co-sponsored by the medical journal The Lancet, features presentations by some of the top researchers in global health and health metrics.
In the April 5-11 issue of The Lancet, the journal announced a partnership with the IHME to start a new Global Health Tracking section in the journal, with a focus on health metrics research. Murray and Julio Frenk, chair of the IHME board and a senior fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, co-authored the first article for that section. The article, Health Metrics and Evaluation: Strengthening the Science, discusses the importance of the field and gives an overview of some of the challenges faced by health metrics researchers.
For more information about the IHME, visit its Web site at:
http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/
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REPEATED METH USE CAUSES LONG-TERM CHANGES IN BRAINS OF MICE
Repeatedly stimulating the mouse brain with methamphetamine depresses important areas of the brain, and those changes can only be undone by re-introducing the drug, according to research at the UW and other institutions. The study, which appears in the April 10 issue of the journal Neuron, provides one of the most in-depth views of the mechanisms of methamphetamine addiction, and suggests that withdrawal from the drug may not undo the changes the stimulant can cause in the brain.
The researchers set out to determine what sort of changes happen in the brain because of repeated use of the stimulant methamphetamine, and to better understand addiction-related behaviors like drug craving and relapse. Methamphetamine, also known as simply meth, is one of the most popular illegal drugs in the United States, and abuse of the drug can cause severe addiction.
Scientists have believed that abuse of drugs like meth can cause changes to the neurons in the brain and the synapses and terminals that control transmission of information in the brain. In this project, researchers focused on the mouse brain, and how it was affected by methamphetamine over 10 days, which is the mouse equivalent of chronic use in humans.
They found that the long administration and withdrawal of the drug depressed the neural terminals controlling the flow of signals between two areas of the brain, the cortex and striatum. Even a long period of withdrawal -- the equivalent of years in humans -- did not return the terminals to normal activity level. Re-introducing the drug, however, reversed the changes in the brain.
The areas affected by the drug are called pre-synaptic terminals, and are related to the flow of information from the cortex to the striatum. When a person sees something new in their environment, the scientists explained, she focuses attention on that item. At the neuron level, that process stimulates the release of dopamine, a chemical involved in transmitting signals in the brain. As the person sees the new item over and over again, the dopamine response drops, and synapses in the brain adapt to the no-longer-new item.
What happens with methamphetamine use is that the drug makes the nervous system release dopamine, which helps a user focus a lot of attention on a particular goal. Scientists believe that meth allows dopamine in the striatum to filter information coming from the cortex through the pre-synaptic terminals. The filtering of some of the terminals would help someone ignore other things and focus on that one goal or task.
After chronic use of methamphetamine, the filtering process eventually becomes a permanent depression in the activity of those terminals in the brain, the scientists found. And the only thing that can help the pre-synaptic terminals recover in mice, they found, was re-administering the drug. These adaptations in the brain may account for at least some of the physiological components of meth addiction, the scientists said, and if the findings also apply to people, they could help in the development of new treatments for addiction.
The study was led by Nigel Bamford, UW assistant professor of neurology and pediatrics, a researcher at the UW Center for Human Development and Disability, and a physician at Seattle Children's Hospital.
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SCHOOL OF MEDICINE LAUNCHES HISPANIC HEALTH PATHWAY
The UW School of Medicine and its Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMCA) have launched a new medical education certification program aimed at improving health in the United States' growing Hispanic community.
The Hispanic Health Pathway is designed to help medical students better understand and more effectively respond to the growing needs of the roughly 30 million Hispanics living in the United States. It will give students the knowledge and skills they need to give high-quality and culturally responsive care to the Hispanic population.
The pathway includes a combination of classroom and Web-based education, independent research, and clinical experiences. Students will be required to complete their Independent Investigative Inquiry (known as the Triple-I) project in an area related to Hispanic health disparities. Students will also have pre-clinical and clinical experiences in clinics that provide care for the Hispanic population, such as the SeaMar Community Clinic in Seattle. They will also be encouraged to participate in a community service project involving the Hispanic community.
For more information, contact the Office of Multicultural Affairs or visit:
http://faculty.washington.edu/dacosta/HHP/index.html
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UW FACULTY MEMBERS JOIN CLINICAL INVESTIGATION SOCIETIES
Michael Chin, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology, and Andrew Scharenberg, associate professor of pediatrics, will be elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) this month. The ASCI has recommended their election to the society, and the two UW faculty members will be formally inducted at the society's annual meeting on April 25.
Chin, who holds the Harold T. Dodge/John L. Locke Endowed Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine, studies the genetic regulation of cardiovascular development, and how developmental mechanisms can affect cardiovascular disease in adults. Scharenberg studies chemical signaling in cells of the immune system, with the long-term aim of developing therapies for people with immune deficiencies.
The ASCI, which was founded 100 years ago, is an honorary society of physician scientists. Membership is by election only, and only researchers who are age 45 or younger are eligible. Election to the society is a recognition of a researcher's significant contributions, at a relatively young age, to the understanding of human disease.
Three other UW faculty have been elected to the Western Society for Clinical Investigation (WSCI). Brent Wisse, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology and Nutrition, joined the society this year. Wisse studies the mechanisms in the central nervous system that can reduce a person's appetite during chronic diseases, a side-effect that can cause many complications for people with cancer, AIDS, and other conditions.
Neil Josephson, assistant professor of medicine, and Robert Richard, assistant professor of medicine, both in the Division of Hematology, have also joined the WSCI. Josephson, an assistant member of the Puget Sound Blood Center, studies stem cell gene therapy and immune tolerance in hemophilia. Richard, the director of hematology at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System, studies pathogenesis of stem cell conditions known as myeloproliferative disorders, as well as stem cell gene therapy for HIV infections.
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Justin Reedy, editor:
206-685-0382, jreedy@u.washington.edu
Online News is copyright 2008. All rights, including electronic
redistribution, are reserved.
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