Kathleen Raven
Wallingford
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Articles by Kathleen Raven
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A New Hope for Patients With Epilepsy
Epilepsy, also known as a seizure disorder, is a condition that can seriously disrupt a patient’s everyday life. About 3.4 million people of all ages in the United States have this neurological disorder. But unlike with other brain-related conditions, about two dozen medications can successfully treat many cases of epilepsy. Although there is no cure, these anti-seizure drugs turn the disease into a chronic, but well-managed condition for many to the point where it barely interferes with life.
Nicotine Addiction From Vaping Is a Bigger Problem Than Teens Realize
Data show clearly that young people are vaping in record numbers. And despite the onslaught of reports and articles highlighting not only its dangers but the marketing tactics seemingly aimed to hook teens and young adults, the number of vaping users continues to climb. These teens may be overlooking (or underestimating) a key ingredient in the vapors they inhale: nicotine. Though it’s possible to buy liquid or pod refills without nicotine, the truth is you have to look much harder to find them.
Putting children first
After the Great Recession, researchers in pediatric health worried that their field might suffer a permanent loss of funding. That concern faded as U.S. research dollars increased in recent years, but Cliff Bogue, M.D., FW ’93, chair of Yale School of Medicine’s pediatric department, believes even more money should be invested today in child health research.
Why is our liver health at risk?
Several health trends are threatening the liver’s overall health, including rising rates of binge drinking, obesity, and hepatitis C infections. Our body’s largest solid internal organ, the liver, is a humble and quiet contributor to our health, toiling ceaselessly without calling attention to itself. Other vital organs make their presence known, like instruments in an orchestra. Our heart thrums and pounds. Our lungs whoosh with air each time we take in a deep breath.
Newer migraine drugs may bring you relief
Credit: Public Domain CC0. Some older migraine medications cause severe side effects. Newer, effective migraine drugs may be less disruptive, explain Yale Medicine experts. After decades of limited options, migraine sufferers now have more choices. If you suffer from migraines, you may find you are living in a constant state of dread as you wait for that recurring, debilitating pain to come back.
Could Newer Migraine Drugs Bring You Relief?
If you suffer from migraines, you may find you are living in a constant state of dread as you wait for that recurring, debilitating pain to come back. You may also be fed up with unsolicited advice—“Drink more water!” or “Get more sleep!”—from well-meaning family and friends. About 12% of Americans suffer from migraines. Globally, women are far more affected than men. In the U.S. alone, nearly three times more women than men have migraines.
Is saliva testing better? 5 things to know about the new COVID-19 test
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Early in the pandemic, it became clear that testing for COVID-19 might be key to controlling outbreaks. But the existing tests have presented logistical challenges. Health officials have been clamoring for a cheaper, easier, and quicker test that would boost the country’s testing capability, which is needed to paint a more accurate picture of the virus’s spread. Patients who test positive could be notified sooner.
Is saliva testing better? Five things to know about the new COVID-19 test
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Early in the pandemic, it became clear that testing for COVID-19 might be key to controlling outbreaks. But the existing tests have presented logistical challenges. Health officials have been clamoring for a cheaper, easier, and quicker test that would boost the country's testing capability, which is needed to paint a more accurate picture of the virus's spread. Patients who test positive could be notified sooner.
Understanding the brain’s resilience
As a teenager, Amy Arnsten, PhD, the Albert E. Kent Professor of Neuroscience and professor of psychology, watched her father slowly recover from a massive heart attack. She noticed how attentive and knowledgeable the doctors were, and that friends and neighbors were very sympathetic. Soon after, Arnsten’s paternal aunt also suffered a debilitating health scare: severe clinical depression. Unlike those who had treated her father, however, these doctors had a harder time helping Arnsten’s aunt.
Artificial intelligence in medicine: Getting smarter one patient at a time
Physicians, researchers, and biomedical engineers are using artificial intelligence (AI) to pinpoint the specific treatment approach for each patient. Credit: Yale University What if doctors had more time to spend addressing their patients' concerns? That's the thrust behind the push for integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into medicine.
Stress, anxiety or depression? Treatment starts with the right diagnosis
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Long before the coronavirus pandemic mixed fear and uncertainty into daily life, Americans felt stressed out. They worried about the country’s rising health care costs, struggled to pay them, and wondered if they could even access care in the future. One-quarter of U.S. adults reported discrimination—based on race and gender—as a significant source of stress. And on an individual level, work and money ranked as the top two major stressors, all according to a 2019 study.
Stress, anxiety or depression? Treatment starts with the right diagnosis
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Long before the coronavirus pandemic mixed fear and uncertainty into daily life, Americans felt stressed out. They worried about the country's rising health care costs, struggled to pay them, and wondered if they could even access care in the future. One-quarter of U.S. adults reported discrimination—based on race and gender—as a significant source of stress. And on an individual level, work and money ranked as the top two major stressors, all according to a 2019 study.
Vaping and COVID-19: Is now a 'reachable moment' to help your teen quit?
Credit: CC0 Public Domain When schools closed this spring to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, teens faced a stressful new reality: a loss of school's daily structure, an upended social life eliminating in-person interactions with friends, and the specter of falling ill with COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified children and teens as being particularly vulnerable to anxiety related to this pandemic.
5 Ways to Prevent COVID-19 Infection-An Illustrated Guide
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, we’re told we can each play a role in preventing its spread. But how? In this video, Clara Liao, a Yale School of Medicine PhD student, sketches out the most important precautions to take on your next grocery store run or other necessary errand. “There is a lot of information out there about how we should be protecting ourselves and others from COVID-19,” Liao says.
Yale’s Veteran Virologist Leads a Team to Close the Coronavirus Testing Gap
As cases of the novel coronavirus began appearing in the United States this year, a veteran Yale virologist was keenly aware of the severe shortage of virus testing kits, both nationwide and in Connecticut, that has become a hallmark of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Want to see a doctor amid COVID-19? Use telehealth
by Carrie MacMillan, Kathleen Raven, Kathy Katella, Colleen Moriarty, Yale University Credit: CC0 Public Domain We are being told to stay home and practice social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, but where does that leave people with routine doctor appointments? What about someone who notices a lump in her breast? Or has worrisome digestive problems? Should these patients still see their doctor, and, if so, how?
Rare Diseases: Customizing Cures, Patient by Patient
Nearly two decades ago, doctors diagnosed Monkol Lek, PhD, a geneticist at Yale School of Medicine, with limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, a rare, inherited muscle-weakening disease that will eventually rob him of the ability to walk without a cane. At the time, he was otherwise healthy and already a successful IBM computer engineer. During visits with neurologists in the years that followed, he kept hearing the same refrain: No medicine or treatment could stop his disease.
Dementia: Your Questions Answered
We rely on memory to get and keep meaning from life. That may be why even small lapses, like misplacing car keys or forgetting a doctor’s appointment, can lead to anxiety about our brain health. In fact, about half of U.S. adults between ages 50 to 64 worry they will develop dementia, along with the severe memory loss and cognitive confusion that come with it, according to a recent national poll. For now, though, the fear of developing dementia outpaces the number of diagnoses.
Nicotine addiction from vaping is a bigger problem than teens realize
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Data show clearly that young people are vaping in record numbers. And despite the onslaught of reports and articles highlighting not only its dangers but the marketing tactics seemingly aimed to hook teens and young adults, the number of vaping users continues to climb. These teens may be overlooking (or underestimating) a key ingredient in the vapors they inhale: nicotine.
Genetic Sequencing in Heart Disease Patients Can Benefit Families
Until recently, patients and doctors relied on well-established family histories of heart problems as a predictor—and not always an accurate one—of risk. If you knew your paternal grandfather had died suddenly from an undiagnosed heart condition, or your father went through life with a fluttering heartbeat that a cardiologist would call an arrhythmia, there were few things you could do to protect yourself. You could eat healthy and stay active.
Genetically sequencing DNA could yield patient care insights
This image shows the coding region in a segment of eukaryotic DNA. Credit: National Human Genome Research Institute Increasingly, the words "genetics" and "genome" are making their way into news stories about health and medicine. Doctors talk about scientific research—how there may be links between gene mutations in your DNA and an increased risk of cancer or heart disease—but it all seems far away, like something that's not quite connected to your own health and well-being right now.
Distracted eaters consume more calories
People who eat meals or snacks while watching TV, playing games or reading tend to consume more calories in a sitting, and especially later in the day, according to a UK review of two dozen past studies. "Some studies have individually shown this before, but the evidence has never been put together," said lead author Eric Robinson from the University of Liverpool, who said the amount consumed could rise by up to 50 percent with distracted eating.
Immuno-Oncology Center's First Symposium Showcases Varied Research
On October 1, two scientists who uncovered key aspects of immunotherapy—using the body’s immune system to fight disease and cancer—learned they had won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Today’s basic and clinical research within the field builds on the trailblazing work in the 1990s of those Nobel Laureates, James P.
Your teen is underestimating the health risks of vaping
Eleven percent of high school seniors, 8 percent of tenth graders, and 3.5 percent of eighth graders reported vaping with nicotine in the past month, according to a national survey released from the University of Michigan late last year. The worrying part? Young people think vaping is mostly harmless. To understand vaping, it's best to start on broad terms. To vape is to inhale vapor created from a liquid heated up inside a device. From there, things quickly get complicated.
FDA Delays Decision on Vaping Products: What You Need To Know
[Originally published: September 13, 2018. Updated: September 9, 2021.] On September 9, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it needs more time to decide whether e-cigarettes from Juul Labs and other manufacturers can remain on the U.S. market. The agency originally had until that date to review approximately 6.5 million product applications from more than 500 companies.
Two stories – The Power of Harassment – Medium
Two stories bookend my professional life. A life constantly buffeted by men in positions of power. The two stories I’ll tell are detailed exquisitely in emails — but emails from the first bookend are no longer retrievable. They might be stored somewhere on Juno Online Services’ servers, but I have no way of accessing them. In 1999, I delighted in this concept of electronic letters. I communicated with a family friend who later became my boss through this newfangled method.
Progress over 100 years
An in-depth look at progress on gender equality at YSM over the last century. If Louise Farnam, PhD ’16, MD ’20, one of Yale’s first women medical students admitted, were to stroll past Sterling Hall of Medicine today, she might be struck by the number of female students, faculty, and administrators on campus. Just over a century ago, Yale School of Medicine wasn’t training women to become physicians.
Coffee on the run
Recently I’ve talked with several long distance runners — think half-marathon or marathon — and have been surprised to hear how many down a mug of coffee before they race. After all, doesn’t coffee cause dehydration, something runners would like to avoid? A PLOS ONE study published in early January suggests the answer is no, at least for those people who regularly drink the beverage.
Why Do Trees Topple in a Storm?
For some, an unwanted reminder of Hurricane Sandy that crashed into the East Coast as megastorm of the century is a big tree uprooted, lying across the yard -- If lucky, missing the house. From North Carolina to Canada trees toppled or broke off big limbs, killing or injuring people and animals, crashing into homes and cars, blocking roads and ripping down power lines. The intense storm toppled 8,497 trees in New York City alone. But it doesn’t take a hurricane or a megastorm to uproot timber.
Physical fitness may be tied to slower memory decline
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Being in good physical shape may help preserve people’s thinking and memory skills, suggests a new study. Researchers made this discovery by mapping participants’ physical fitness against the number of errors they made on a range of cognitive tests over time. They found, for instance, that 80-year-olds who were at one point approximately twice as fit as their peers made about 25 percent fewer errors on a test of memory and concentration.
Yale advances in a ‘March Madness’-styled scientific research competition
Two Yale research teams recently moved forward into round four of a different kind of March Madness competition. The event, called STAT Madness, aims to raise awareness about scientific breakthroughs from national institutions and is sponsored by the Boston-based news organization STAT. The ongoing heated competition consists of voting for the best innovation in science from the past year. The current round of voting ends at midnight on Thursday, March 22.
A Life Saved By Genetic Sequencing
On her Instagram feed, Amanda Gonzalez-Bunster recently posted a photo in which she is, literally, the picture of health. She’s beaming. The camera’s flash bounces off her obsidian-black hair and the metallic foil flower pattern on her skirt. Her eyebrows, perfectly arched, convey poise and power. Gonzalez-Bunster, 35, looks like a business executive hamming it up after a long day in the office.
Ada Yonath and the Female Question
Just minutes after Ada Yonath learned of her shared Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on the ribosome in October 2009, she answered another phone call. This time Adam Smith, editor-in-chief of the Nobel Prize Foundation, spoke crisply on the other line, asking her questions for a short, recorded phone interview, per tradition. Recently I listened repeatedly to the beginning of this recording to catch Yonath’s inflections, as nuanced as crevices on the ribosomes she crystallized in her lab.
Three Men and a Baby: A Brief History of King Cakes
People report finding Jesus in the strangest ways; today, one of those ways might be in a cake. That’s because it’s Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday, the last day to eat King’s Cake before Lent begins. The King’s Cake accompanies festivities to commemorate the Epiphany, the day the Magi (interpreted by some to mean “kings”) arrived in Bethlehem and presented gifts to baby Jesus the twelfth night after his birth.
Online tools may boost breast cancer patients' mood
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women with breast cancer who created a personal website about their health reported feeling less depressed, more positive and having a greater appreciation for life in a small new study. Though cancer patients have long benefited from support groups made up of fellow patients and survivors, researchers said, they may still have trouble talking about their experiences with family and friends - who may also feel uncomfortable broaching the subject.
Mental disorder treatment common after childhood cancer
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who had cancer as children are more likely to be treated for neurodevelopmental, emotional or behavioral disorders later in life, a new Danish study finds. Researchers examined records from survivors' siblings as well, finding those who were younger than 10 years old or not yet born when the cancer was diagnosed tended to also have higher risks of mental trouble later on.
Physical punishment tied to aggression, hyperactivity
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Regardless of the culture a child lives in, corporal punishment may do lasting psychological harm, German researchers say. In a new study conducted in Tanzania, where physical punishment is considered normal, primary school students who were beaten by teachers or family members in the name of discipline tended to show more behavior problems, not fewer, the researchers found.
Aspirin risks may outweigh benefits in healthy adults
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Healthy adults who take daily aspirin to stave off heart disease may be inviting more harm than benefit, according to a new review of past studies. Adults face a crush of conflicting health messages about aspirin and the role it plays as a preventive medicine.
In sickness and health, sex keeps older couples happy: study
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Among older couples, physical illnesses can strain a marriage, but maintaining a healthy sex life could make a difference in how happily both partners cope, a new study suggests. Researchers have long known the illnesses that come with age are linked to poorer marriage quality, but exactly why has not been clear.
Obese kids may face higher risk of bad elbow breaks
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Complicated elbow fractures could be added to a growing list of heightened health risks for obese children, according to a recent analysis. Obese kids were nine times more likely to suffer an elbow fracture with multiple fracture lines in the same arm, or with the bone exposed through the skin, compared to normal-weight children, researchers found. Obese kids were also more likely to have fallen on their outstretched hand.
Borderline high blood pressure tied to deaths
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Blood pressure readings above the ideal but below the formal definition of "high" still raise a person's risk of death from stroke and heart disease and should be addressed, according to a new study. After analyzing results from 20 previous studies that included more than one million men and women, researchers calculated that 15 percent of deaths from stroke and 11 percent of heart disease deaths would be avoided if so-called prehypertension were eliminated.
Friday Happy Hour: An Introduction (American Lager)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) , over 50% of adults over the age of 18 had at least one alcoholic drink per month in 2010. Of course, many of those folks (myself included) drank much more than that, totaling $152 billion dollars in the US alone according to US Department of Agriculture (USDA). For context, that's about 10% of what Americans spent on all other food the same year.
"Hey, you are good why are you not a physicist?"
On the last day of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, the prize winners, young researchers and journalists mingled together on a boat ride to Mainau Island. During this two-hour ride, I witnessed a conversation take place between young researcher Bettina Keller and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1997). The brief conversation covered everything from a mini-history of the famous E=mc2 equation to quantum physics.
Still against all odds: 'Black Women in Medicine'
Dr. Velma Scantlebury was well into her career on the day that she walked into a patient’s hospital room to review his pre-operation procedures. The patient asked to see his surgeon. “I am your surgeon,” Scantlebury told him. In Florida several years ago, a journalist wrote a newspaper column expressing deep gratitude to his surgeon, Dr. Claudia L. Thomas. Upon first meeting Thomas, the journalist wrote, he assumed that she was his dietary consultant.
Introducing: The Food Matters Crew
Do you ever wonder about the science behind your food? We do, too. Our group of writers serves up juicy topics like genetic engineering, gut bacteria and the chemical reactions that occur during cooking. Together, we’ll peer inside factory farms, dark jungles, cafeterias, laboratories and those trendy molecular gastronomy spots. Grab a bite, and sit down at the table to learn why Food Matters.
Two stories - Kathleen Raven - Medium
Two stories bookend my professional life. A life constantly buffeted by men in positions of power. The two stories I’ll tell are detailed exquisitely in emails — but emails from the first bookend are no longer retrievable. They might be stored somewhere on Juno Online Services’ servers, but I have no way of accessing them. In 1999, I delighted in this concept of electronic letters. I communicated with a family friend who later became my boss through this newfangled method.
Quitting Smoking Linked To Improved Mood
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Smokers who kick the habit appear to benefit from an improved mood, according to a new review of past studies. On average, quitting smoking was associated with improvements in mental health similar to taking an antidepressant drug, a team of UK researchers found. "The main message is that when people stop smoking, they feel better than they did when they were smoking," Dr. Paul Aveyard, one of the review's authors, told Reuters Health.
Quitting smoking linked to improved mood
On average, quitting smoking was associated with improvements in mental health similar to taking an antidepressant drug, a team of UK researchers found. "The main message is that when people stop smoking, they feel better than they did when they were smoking," Dr. Paul Aveyard, one of the review's authors, told Reuters Health.
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