Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Post

Graduate school is a big undertaking, and it can sometimes be hard to stay afloat. Second-year Ph.D. student Katie King shares insight on places in Baltimore to separate work from study to keep your head above water. https://bit.ly/3Zn4ki0

Guide dogs can be critical to sustaining the quality of life for people with vision impairments. Dagmar Wehling, staff member at Wilmer Eye Institute, is training puppies to become guide dogs. Read more here. https://bit.ly/4d9gZZ7

Fatigue is the loss of energy or motivation to engage in effortful activity. Everyone experiences fatigue at some point in their lives, but fatigue can become pathological in many patients with neuropsychiatric conditions or neurological diseases. Despite the prevalence of fatigue in patients and its debilitating effects on their day-to-day lives, the biomedical community lacks a deep understanding of the underlying mechanisms of fatigue and how to treat it. Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering Ph.D. candidate Michael Dryzer studies fatigue in healthy people and patients with neurodegenerative disease and shares his thoughts on the state of the field. https://bit.ly/3MGWOqJ

Equipped with a suitcase full of honey, high school sophomore Carson Shin contacted university after university, hoping to work with expert biochemists to investigate the sticky substance's antimicrobial properties. The only problem? Scientists seemed wary of collaborating with a 15-year-old. Shin couldn't have predicted that, five years later, he would co-author a Johns Hopkins Medicine report showing that dormant and previously undescribed bacteria found in raw honey produce antibiotics that can kill the bacterial pathogen Legionella. The pathogen can be found in potable water and causes Legionnaires' disease, a life-threatening pneumonia that kills one in 10 people infected with it. https://bit.ly/3AXG6AZ

A pulse oximeter, a device that measures heart rate and oxygen saturation in red blood cells, is an important tool that can monitor the function of a person’s lungs and heart. However, clinicians say the device, which usually clips on the end of a finger, is not designed for infants and children or low-resource settings, and it is not consistently available at outpatient clinics in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. To help, a multidisciplinary team, led by Johns Hopkins pediatric pulmonologist Eric McCollum, has developed an innovative smartphone-based pulse oximeter for children in South Africa that does not rely on a probe. Findings of a study on the development of the device were published in the journal JMIR Human Factors. https://bit.ly/47huvso

Congratulations to Nadia Hansel, who was named director of the Johns Hopkins Department of Medicine after serving as interim director since 2022. Dr. Hansel will be the first woman to lead the storied department in its 131-year history.

Researchers are using a computerized prediction model to determine which patients with a rare inflammatory disease are at higher risk for developing cancer. https://bit.ly/3yZWPTJ

Our very own Dean DeWeese had the honor of throwing the first pitch at this Wednesday’s Baltimore Orioles vs the White Sox game. Over 1,100 staff, students, and faculty were in attendance showing their Hopkins and Orioles pride.

Miscarriage is the early loss of a pregnancy, and it is very common. There are symptoms to look for during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. Treatment and management options are available for a diagnosed miscarriage. https://bit.ly/4cU6lW0