Aliquots - Research Briefs

April 24, 2023

Novel drugs have potential for treating tuberculosis

Drug-resistant tuberculosis is on the rise, and novel antibacterial drugs called SPTs have potential for treating the deadly lung infection.

By Leigh MacMillan
April 20, 2023

Overactive bladder and anxiety

Anxiety and psychological stress impact hypersensitivity mechanisms in women that could contribute to overactive bladder — a frequent and sudden urge to urinate that is difficult to control.

By Sarah E. Glass
April 20, 2023

Genetics and chronic pain

Polygenic risk scores — scores that reflect the influence of common genetic variants — could be used to predict the likelihood of developing chronic overlapping pain conditions and guide biomarker and targeted prevention efforts.

By Bill Snyder
April 11, 2023

COVID on Twitter: town vs. country

A natural language processing analysis of 407 million tweets from May 2020 to January 2022 captures the rural-urban divide regarding COVID-19.

By Paul Govern
April 10, 2023

The problem with the problem list

Algorithms to infer missing problems and suggest that they be added to electronic health records improved problem list completeness, with benefits for clinical care, patient comprehension of health conditions and population health.

By Paul Govern
April 6, 2023

A ‘supermere’ method for biomarker discovery

Vanderbilt researchers have developed a method for isolating extracellular vesicles and nanoparticles — a complex transport system involved in health and disease — which will improve biomarker discovery and the identification of therapeutic targets.

By Bill Snyder
March 28, 2023

Inflammation implicated in exfoliation syndrome

Computational genetics tools have implicated inflammatory pathways in exfoliation syndrome, the most common cause of secondary glaucoma, which can result in blindness.
By Leigh MacMillan
March 27, 2023

Improving lung nodule diagnosis

Adding blood and imaging biomarkers to a clinical prediction model could improve diagnostic accuracy for the 1.6 million lung nodules detected each year, many through expanded lung cancer screening programs.
By Leigh MacMillan
March 23, 2023

Decoding cell division machinery

Phosphate modification regulates the cell localization of Cdc15, one of the main controllers of cell division, to fine tune the assembly of cell division machinery.
By Caroline Cencer 
March 23, 2023

E. coli uses serine to abide acidity

Vanderbilt researchers have discovered another acid resistance mechanism for UTI-causing E. coli, laying the foundation for targeted antibacterial therapies.
By Cherie Saffold
March 7, 2023

Treating delirium detected in the ED

Higher intensity physical or occupational therapy may be a useful intervention to shorten delirium duration in older hospitalized adults, Vanderbilt researchers recently reported.
By Leigh MacMillan
March 6, 2023

Cell-free hemoglobin in pulmonary hypertension

Cell-free hemoglobin generated by the lungs may be a therapeutic target for treating pulmonary arterial hypertension, Vanderbilt researchers found.
By Leigh MacMillan
March 2, 2023

Sex counts in the brain as seasons change

Photoperiod, or length of day, has sex-specific impacts on dopamine dynamics in the brain, offering insights into sex differences in neuropsychiatric disorders, Vanderbilt researchers report.
By Paul Govern