Latest STANFORD Stories

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- After more than two-and-a-half years, Ronald McDonald House at Stanford is saying goodbye to its longest continuous residents, Shawn Stockwell and his family from Eagle River, AK. Shawn's mother, Trista, summed up the families' elation saying, "The fact that we're taking Shawn and his new heart home is absolutely a miracle after the complications he went through. There were a couple times that we didn't think he'd even leave the intensive...

Rare back-to-back cesarean and liver transplant surgeries rescue dying mom and preemie baby STANFORD, Calif., Dec. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- "We were thinking we'd be lucky to get one live person out of this situation, and we didn't know which it would be," said William Benitz, MD. (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081209/SF50878) Benitz, the chief of neonatology at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, was describing an extraordinary and intense collaboration by doctors...

STANFORD, Calif., Dec. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Bipartisan Center for Research and Policy (BCRP) and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) released recommendations today for a California cap and trade system. These recommendations are in anticipation of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) vote next week to approve a Scoping Plan (regulations and programs to meet and reduce California's greenhouse gas targets by 2020) for the implementation of AB 32--The...

When a pregnant woman goes into early labor, her obstetrician may give her drugs to quiet the woman's uterus and prevent premature birth.New research shows, however, that one popular drug works no better than a placebo at maintaining pregnancy after the initial bout of preterm labor is halted, say scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. The new trial is the first-ever placebo-controlled test of...

How many mouths does a plant need in order to survive? The answer changes depending on climate, and some of the decisions are made long before a new leaf sprouts.Stanford researchers have found that the formation of microscopic pores called stomata (derived from the Greek word stoma, meaning mouth) is controlled by a specific signaling pathway that blocks activity of a single protein required for stomata development. The findings are described in a paper published Nov. 14 in Science.Stomata...

Is the baby a boy or girl? Few things are harder for new parents than hearing their doctor say, "I don't know.""It is shocking," said Katrina Karkazis, PhD, the author of a new book, Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority and Lived Experience, which will be released by Duke University Press on Nov. 14. Shame and confusion may overwhelm parents whose infant's anatomy doesn't match typical male or female patterns, Karkazis said. "It's not something you find in most books that prepare you for...

Opiates such as morphine and codeine are the primary prescription medication for pain relief, but just how well these drugs work varies significantly from patient to patient. And no one really knows why. Certain patients may require 10 times the amount of opiates, also known as narcotics, to get the same level of pain relief as others. Side effects such as nausea or sedation can be debilitating to some, while nonexistent for others. Addiction potential also varies from patient to patient....

The Northern California Cancer Center, the Stanford Cancer Center and the American Cancer Society are co-sponsoring Nov. 8 the second annual Cancer Survivorship Conference "Now what? The new normal of cancer survivorship after treatment." The conference is intended to help cancer survivors and their families, support networks and health care professionals understand and navigate questions and issues that arise after treatment ends, from a patient's physical and psychosocial needs to...

Clusters of mouse embryonic stem cells called embryoid bodies more closely approximate true embryos in organization and structure than previously thought, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Harnessing the signals that influence the cells' fate may help researchers more accurately direct the differentiation of embryonic stem cells for use in therapy. The researchers found that embryoid bodies have hallmarks of gastrulation -- a remarkable developmental...

Investigators combing the genome in the hope of finding genetic variants responsible for triggering early-onset diabetes may be looking in the wrong place, new research at the Stanford University School of Medicine suggests. Early-onset diabetes, also known as type-1 diabetes, is an autoimmune disease, caused when the immune system attacks and destroys insulin-producing cells in a person's pancreas. What triggers that immune response apparently has less to do with having a distinct...