Health Sciences

Winter 2001

Curing what ails you

IF GARY MEADOWS is right, popping Prozac will do more for you than relieve depression. Meadows’s preliminary data suggest that fluoxetine, the generic form of Prozac, inhibits the growth of melanoma tumors in mice.

The Prozac project began about two years ago in collaboration with neurophysiologist Tanja Obradovic, then at Washington State University. Obradovic and Meadows, who is Dorothy O. Kennedy distinguished professor and director of WSU’s Cancer Prevention and Research Center in Spokane, knew that melanoma cells not only make the neurotransmitter serotonin, but also have receptors for it. A receptor is a site on a cell that binds with substances such as … » More …

Fall 2004

As you read this, thank your ion channels

When Mike Varnum, assistant professor, Veterinary and Comparative Anatomy, Pharmacology, and Physiology, visits the aquarium, he looks at the sea creatures a bit differently than the rest of us. What interests him most about a creature is not its bright color or odd shape, but whether it makes a toxin that blocks an ion channel. Oddly, many of the creatures do.

Many toxins, in fact, block specific ion channels, though Varnum uses different agents in his work. Ion channels are pores in the membranes of many different types of cells-highly selective, gated pores-that permit the passage of specific charged particles, or ions, into or out … » More …

Fall 2004

What now, mad cow?

Is it really as bad as it seems? » More ...

Fall 2004

The New Nutrition

The problem with dietary recommendations is that they haven't been necessarily based on sound science. » More ...

Fall 2004

Tracing an elusive cause of panic

Barbara Sorg's formaldehyde animal model has shown that exposure to the chemical increases levels of stress-hormone production. » More ...

Fall 2004

Field-burning study proves inconclusive

The study found no significant health effect from field burning--nor did it explain why. » More ...

Summer 2004

A Quick Test for a Killer

While Listeria monocytogenes accounts for only 1/100th of 1 percent of all food-borne illnesses in the United States, it's responsible for a whopping 28 percent of annual deaths. Development of a quick test for the pathogen promises to drastically reduce that statistic. » More ...

Winter 2005

Peru: In the middle of the jungle with no Walgreens

In summer 2004 my husband, Stuart, and I made our first trip to Peru. We traveled with a charitable organization that hoped to build an orphanage and medical clinic there. Having completed my second semester of nursing studies at the Washington State University Intercollegiate College of Nursing, I was the most medical-savvy person on the trip. But that didn’t stop us from doing a lot of good work. We set up clinics in Iquitos, a port city of about 400,000 residents near the headwaters of the Amazon River, and worked farther downriver in less populated areas with the Yahua and Bora Indian tribes. We were … » More …

Winter 2005

Honduras: What Patients We Saw!

During those long, hot, humid, and exhausting days, we saw, experienced, and accomplished things we had never before imagined possible.

We were a team, 24 strong, who came together for 10 days in the early spring of 2005 to travel to Honduras. We were nurses, physicians, dentists, dental hygienists and assistants, optometrists, and support personnel on a mission to provide medical, dental, and eye care to people who were otherwise unable to obtain it.

Our way was carefully prepared for us by an advance team of in-country personnel who work with Worldwide Heart-to-Heart Ministries, our mission sponsors. We flew into the city of San Pedro … » More …

Fall 2005

Diabetes: It's still up to you

Although Mary Ellen Harvey '58 knew about her type 2 diabetes for nearly 20 years, she wasn't managing it very well on her own. That changed when she joined thousands of other diabetics across the country in a diabetes management trial. » More ...