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Health Research

WVU researcher studies inflammatory effects of toxic chemicals

Jonathan Boyd—a West Virginia University School of Medicine researcher—is investigating the inflammatory responses produced by exposure to chemical agents. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency recently awarded him over $2 million for the project.

‘It’s really a scary time:’ WVU researcher works to keep high school athletes safe across U.S.

Exercising in the heat isn’t just miserable. It can even be deadly. Samantha Scarneo-Miller—a researcher with the WVU School of Medicine—and her colleagues at the University of Connecticut investigated the policies that high schools across the country use to protect their student-athletes from the most common safety threats, including heat stroke. The team also traveled from state to state to meet with policymakers and promote life-saving policies. The National Football League and the National Athletic Trainers Association provided $1.4 million for their effort.

Saving limbs, saving lives: WVU Heart and Vascular Institute researcher receives NIH grant to prevent amputations in West Virginia

With a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Samantha Minc, M.D., vascular surgeon and researcher at the WVU Heart and Vascular Institute, is launching a pilot program to prevent amputations in West Virginia. Given that West Virginians face a disproportionate number of risk factors for amputations, the program could save many lives.

‘100,000 parameters’: WVU researcher leads effort to reduce data-transfer error in radiation therapy

As the complexity of radiation therapy has grown, so too has the amount of data that goes into treatment machines. With more data comes more opportunity for errors in data transfer. Ramon Alfredo Siochi—WVU’s director of medical physics—is working to make those errors less likely. He led a task group to develop guidelines for checking the data’s accuracy before patients receive treatment.