Children undergoing a stem cell transplant to treat leukemia, blood disorders or other types of cancer can safely undergo a less toxic treatment regimen than one that is traditionally used, report researchers from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center in the journal Bone Marrow Transplantation.

A simple blood test may detect whether a chronic heart transplant patient is rejecting their heart, and may reduce the need for invasive heart-muscle biopsies, according to the results of a multi-center study called CARGO (Cardiac Allograft Rejection Gene Expression Observational Study), led by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center and published in the December 19 The American Journal of Transplantation. The findings describe a new methodology that may impact the way heart transplant patients are treated. The four-year, eight-site CARGO study included data from centers accounting for approximately 22 percent of the yearly U.S. heart transplant population.

For years, experts have puzzled over the fact that lupus patients often experience accelerated declines in thinking and memory as they age, despite the absence of the usual neurological culprits, such as neurovascular inflammation or stroke. Now a husband-and-wife team of researchers, including Dr. Bruce T. Volpe, Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and Attending Neurologist at New-York Presbyterian Hospital and Burke Medical Research Institute in White Plains, say they have a new approach to this puzzle that may open the door to treatments that slow or prevent lupus-related cognitive decline.

Every living cell contains microscopic ion channels, tiny portals that allow select molecules to pass through the cell's otherwise impermeable, protective outer membrane. Since the 1970s, experts have believed the physical structure of these channels dictates which ions -- potassium, sodium, calcium, and others -- are admitted, and which are not. But now, using a computational model, experts led by Weill Cornell's Dr. Benoit Roux say they have proven this long-accepted view wrong.

Men with androgen-independent (hormone-refractory) metastatic prostate cancer treated with Taxotere® (docetaxel) Injection Concentrate in combination with estramustine survived 20 percent longer than similar patients receiving the standard therapy, according to a landmark Phase III study authored by physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center.

As part of the second annual World Voice Day on April 16, physicians at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia are urging New Yorkers to follow a few simple tips to help them maintain a healthy voice.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia has begun offering lung volume reduction surgery (LVRS) for select individuals with emphysema; the first patient underwent surgery on Wednesday, February 4, 2004. NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia is the only New York City-area hospital and one of only 17 centers nationwide to be selected by the Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services (CMS) to perform the procedure after having participated in the National Emphysema Treatment Trial (NETT). NETT demonstrated that the procedure improves the quality of life for certain emphysema patients. As part of the ruling, Medicare will reimburse the procedure.

Billions of times per day, neurons in the brain use microscopic packets of neurotransmitter chemicals to pass information across the synapse -- the gaps separating individual cells. And because almost every neurological disease, addiction, and drug aimed at brain function relies on synaptic activity, advances in understanding how this messenger system works is of great importance to medical research. Now, researchers believe they have identified another critical piece of the synaptic puzzle.