Mayo Clinic has launched a first of its kind regenerative transplant program aimed at restoring function for people who need their larynx, or voice box, removed. In the United States about 60,000 people are living without a larynx, due to disease or trauma. The larynx is a segment of the respiratory [...]

People with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia often rely on family caregivers to plan or assist with their medical care. But caregivers are not usually fully integrated in their family members’ clinical appointments or care plan. To identify gaps in care and communication, Mayo Clinic researchers have identified seven best practices for health care providers [...]

A collaborative team of Mayo Clinic scientists is studying an innovative strategy for treating advanced cancer, using genomics and human tumor samples as their guide. The novel approach, called Ex Vivo, creates a miniature cancer replica for testing therapies outside a patient’s body, combined with a comprehensive genomic analysis of [...]

When searching for an exact diagnosis through a myriad of complex and serious factors spread across millions of data points, it helps to have a powerful magnifying glass — and another expert point of view. Enter Arjun Athreya, Ph.D., an engineer by trade who has a knack for bringing together data [...]

Editor's note: This story is not about Mayo Clinic research, but rather about a part of a researcher's life that builds hope in little hearts, and gives him joy. It's 10 a.m. on a Thursday, and Merrick Ducharme is up to his elbows (OK, his wrists) in slime. The gooey, gluey [...]

Adrian Vella, M.D., says medical careers run like a hereditary condition in his family. “My father is a physician, my brother is a surgeon, and there are lots of medical people on my mother’s side as well.” So it was almost inevitable that, from an early age, he thought about [...]

According to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, clinical decision support provides clinicians, staff, patients or other individuals with knowledge and person-specific information, intelligently filtered or presented at appropriate times, to enhance health and health care. At Mayo Clinic there are a range of activities surrounding [...]

Research is advancing a regenerative solution for a quality of life-limiting complication of mesh-based surgical repairs for stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse in women. While mesh-based surgical treatments are durable and provide symptom relief for a great number of patients, there is a risk of mesh complications following [...]

By Zuckerman Institute Communications Staff The protein tau has long been implicated in Alzheimer’s and a host of other debilitating brain diseases. But scientists have struggled to understand exactly how tau converts from its normal, functional form into a misfolded, harmful one. Now, researchers at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute and Mayo [...]

By Adolfo Espitia Jr., public affairs intern Diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension some years ago, Elizabeth, now 65, was left with a debilitating condition that prevented her from even light activities. She had to rely on her husband to take care of their home. Finally, the medications she had taken for 10 years stopped working, forcing [...]

By Barbara J. Toman For Veronique Belzil, Ph.D., the fight against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is personal. In 2000, while working as a psychologist in Canada, she watched her husband's uncle succumb to the disease. "The progression was so fast and his condition was so sad," she says. "I just [...]

If you're interested in genetics, diabetes, transplant or robotics, January was a good month. The Mayo Clinic Research News Roundup includes brief summaries and links to these and a tidy sum of other recent research-related news releases from Mayo Clinic. You also might find some other handy resources. Read on for more information [...]

Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University formed the Mayo Clinic-Arizona State University Alliance for Health Care in 2010 to merge minds and accelerate research discoveries, improve patient care through innovation and transform medical education to enhance health outcomes. Highlights of two of the joint research efforts follow. Identifying a blood-based [...]

Jay Alix grew up surrounded by an unlikely team of experts. That, and a supportive community, gave him a push that turned him into a world-class business leader. Now a member of the Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees, he’s sharing his legendary business acumen to help Mayo Clinic educate the [...]

By Christoph Bahn Approximately 80 million CT scans are performed in the United States every year. Adrenal tumors are found incidentally in about 5% of these scans. Most of these tumors will turn out to be benign, but a small fraction will be adrenal cortical carcinoma, a type of cancer with high mortality [...]

COPD is a chronic lung disease that makes it difficult to breath. According to the American Lung Association, COPD is the third leading cause of death in the U.S., with more than 15 million people currently living with the disease. It also increases the likelihood that people will develop heart disease, lung cancer [...]

By Maria Ly, undergraduate public affairs intern Sanjay Misra, M.D., an interventional radiologist, in 2010 launched a lab focused on improving existing therapies and creating new treatments to help patients with renal disease. Funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association, and Mayo Clinic, the [...]

Cognitive dysfunction, sometimes called "chemo brain," stemming from chemotherapy is a major adverse condition affecting approximately 14 million cancer patients and survivors in the United States. Although chemo brain has been widely reported by patients and clinicians, the cause of concentration and memory problems in cancer patients is not well [...]

By Jay Furst A compass, whether the old-fashioned kind in a brass case or the hands-free version on your dashboard, provides direction and helps you to find your way. The word's Latin origin, though, is about more than navigation. It's the root of the word "compassion," which implies feeling, connectedness and [...]

A molecular switch has the ability to turn on a substance in animals that repairs neurological damage in disorders such as multiple sclerosis (MS), Mayo Clinic researchers discovered. The early research in animal models could advance an already approved Food and Drug Administration therapy and also could lead to new strategies for treating [...]

Breakthroughs in medical science rarely burst on the scene. Behind every advance is years of work by dogged researchers who nurtured the seed of idea until it flowered, bore fruit and materialized into a better treatment, device or therapy for patients. Here is where those seeds start: More than a [...]

Platelets spun from a person’s own blood may be a new option for treating baldness in women, according to research at Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus. A pilot study found platelet rich plasma (PRP), a regenerative therapy associated with natural growth factors and tissue healing, regrows hair as well as other treatments on [...]

Continuously published since 1926, Mayo Clinic Proceedings is a peer-reviewed journal, ranked among the top 10% of the 160 clinical journals in the Medicine, General and Internal category. The journal has a distribution of approximately 127,000. Articles published in peer-reviewed journals have been reviewed by experts in the relevant field to [...]

Patient-centered research. It's this kind of research that leads to practice transformation - improving outcomes, costs and overall experience with health and health care. And patients are the reason Kirsten Holbrook, a supervisor in the Respiratory Care Department, Mayo Clinic Health System Eau Claire, Wisconsin, decided to conduct a research project. Holbrook [...]

So in mid-January, the holiday season is still fresh in your mind. Quite likely it was a time when you made full use of your senses of smell and taste. Mmmm. Just thinking about cookies baking in the kitchen is enough to get your mouth watering. So what happens if your [...]