News Releases

Evidence of infection by the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus first identified in the United Kingdom has been found in a southeast Pennsylvania resident.

A team led by physicists at the University of Pennsylvania and physicians at the University’s Perelman School of Medicine has been awarded a two-year, $2 million grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences for the development of a handheld device that can detect the signature “odor” of people with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

There is currently no cure for osteoarthritis, but a group of scientists believe they’ve discovered a method through which a simple knee injection could potentially stop the disease’s effects. These researchers showed that they could target a specific protein pathway in mice, put it into overdrive and halt cartilage degeneration over time. Building on that finding, they were able to show that treating mice with surgery-induced knee cartilage degeneration through the same pathway via the state of the art of nanomedicine could dramatically reduce the cartilage degeneration and knee pain.

Cardiac rehabilitation is a therapy that combines guided exercise along with heart-healthy lifestyle education that can be life-saving for the majority of people who have had a major cardiac event, such as a heart attack. However, it is underutilized in the United States, with many hospitals referring just 20 percent or fewer of their eligible patients, largely because the referral process can be cumbersome.

Two faculty from the University of Pennsylvania, Scott D. Halpern, MD, PhD, of the Perelman School of Medicine and Jennifer Prah Ruger, PhD, of the School of Social Policy & Practice and the Perelman School of Medicine, have been named Hastings Center Fellows in recognition of their outstanding accomplishments in deepening public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, science, and technology.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System has named James Demetriades as CEO of Penn Medicine Princeton Health. He will begin his new role on March 1, 2021.