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.

The drug regimen BEACOPP (bleomycin, etoposide, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, procarbazine, prednisone) has shown to be a safe and effective treatment for children and adolescents with advanced Hodgkin's disease, according to an international pilot study involving more than 200 centers, led by Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian pediatric oncologist Dr. Kara Kelly.

A certain combination of AIDS drugs is superior to others when it comes to the initial treatment of HIV patients, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center researchers report in this week's (April 29) New England Journal of Medicine.