Critically ill patients are not benefiting from antipsychotic medications that have been used to treat delirium in intensive care units (ICUs) for more than four decades, according to a study released today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Millions of patients in intensive care units each year develop delirium during their hospitalization and often leave the hospital with cognitive deficits similar to those suffering from traumatic brain injury or mild Alzheimer’s disease.

A receptor previously implicated in asthma may also play roles in other allergic diseases and in leukemia, Vanderbilt researchers have discovered.

A drug used to treat diabetes may point to new therapies for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) bronchiolitis — inflammation and obstruction of the lungs’ small airways. A multi-disciplinary team of Vanderbilt investigators has demonstrated that liraglutide reduces the inflammatory response to RSV infection in a mouse model of the disease.

With last week’s election of Lorraine Ware, MD, as vice president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), two faculty members of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine are among the current officers of the elite physician-scientist honor society.

Alpha-gal allergy has commonly been referred to as “the red meat” allergy, but doctors at the Vanderbilt Asthma, Sinus and Allergy Program (ASAP) helped uncover that not only red meat, but some medications, can contain alpha-gal.

A Vanderbilt study of more than 1,000 intensive care unit patients around the country, nearly three-fourths of whom experienced delirium, showed that many drugs given to sedate patients in the ICU are actually increasing their chances of — and duration of — delirium instead of helping them recover.