Related stories: How we got here Living livelier: Another patient’s story Barshop Institute: A timeline Ramiro Guerra, 90, does yard work whenever the weather’s good. Other times he is inside, often sleeping and sometimes agitated. The U.S. veteran began to forget things in 2006, the year his wife of 57 years, Elida, passed away. “It […]
Veronica Carrillo, 17, and her mother, Paula, waited in the emergency department at University Hospital for the doctor’s diagnosis. The avid soccer midfielder had gone up to head the ball in a game when, in midair, the side of her head collided with the forehead of another player. Skulls are hard; no ball could make that […]
They treated victims of abuse, and people who had lost everything after some unforeseen, devastating crisis. They treated prostitutes and drug users who measure time by the number of days since their last fix. They treated people living on the streets who used every last cent they had on a meal, not a toothbrush. They […]
Andres Castillo Jr. was born with a hole in his heart. At age 2, he underwent his first major heart surgery to repair the hole—an atrial septal defect. Seven years later, his first pacemaker was implanted—a box the size of an old VHS tape, visible under his shirt. He tried to live a normal life, […]
Zyren Lopez just can’t tolerate cats. “Cats and dust,” he said in a polite whisper. In the second grade, Zyren recalled, “I started getting really sick. My chest was hurting and it was hard to breathe, so I went to the nurse and she called my mom. And they wanted to take me to the […]
It started with a simple question: Why can’t kids with disabilities play sports? In 2001, Tracey Fontenot and Kacey Wernli, physical therapists working at a local San Antonio hospital, wondered how they could get their young patients with physical and developmental disabilities to be active past their therapy sessions. What if they formed a baseball […]
The idea: tiny radioactive fat particles, only 100 nanometers across, inserted by the thinnest of catheters directly into a tumor where they remain, radiating only a tiny distance, affecting only the tumor. The target: glioblastoma, the deadliest of brain tumors. On March 10, David Williams became the first human ever to have the new radiation […]
The world’s longest-lived rodents don’t eat broccoli, but they have the protection of a protein that, in humans, is activated by consumption of steamed broccoli. The protein is called Nrf2, and it was connected with the maximum life span in 10 rodent species tested by the UT Health Science Center’s Barshop Institute for Longevity and […]
Strokes affect nearly a million Americans each year, but an already-approved drug used for epilepsy could dramatically reduce their debilitating impact. New research shows one dose of the anti-epilepsy drug retigabine given hours after a mouse experienced a stroke preserved brain tissue and prevented the loss of balance and motor coordination. In the study, both […]
Teachers relish “aha! moments,” when students understand a complex concept for the first time. These moments are coming from both sides of the border with a new educational program between nursing schools at the UT Health Science Center and Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, Mexico. The Salud: Nuevas Fronteras program is bringing eight […]