Peter Palese, PhD, chair of the department of microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, discusses the microbiology of flu vaccination and his work on a universal flu vaccine.
“In the U.S. alone every year, estimates are that between 30,000 and 50,000 people die of influenza despite the availability of the vaccine. The ideal vaccine would be one which is given once in a lifetime, and it would provide protection against all influenza strains. We hope that we will achieve the same with our universal influenza vaccine, which we are developing at Mount Sinai.”
From left: Rosalind J. Wright, MD, MPH; Manish Arora, PhD, MPH; the two moderators, Shevon Skinner, RN, MSN, MPH, Director of Patient Services, LSA Family Health Service in East Harlem, and Maida Galvez, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, Environmental Medicine and Public Health; David Bellinger, PhD; and Avi Reichenberg, PhD.
“The Decade of the Developing Brain,” a symposium held in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health’s Children’s Environmental Health Center, could arguably be summed up by these three points: “Our environment is complex and constantly changing. Prenatal and early postnatal life are critical periods that can affect lifelong health,” said Manish Arora, PhD, MPH, Vice Chair of the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. And finally, “Save your teeth.”
At the half-day symposium, held at the New York Academy of Medicine on Friday, February 24, a keynote speech by David Bellinger, PhD, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston Children’s Hospital, outlined the population-level effects of environmental chemicals on neurodevelopment. Avi Reichenberg, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, and Environmental Medicine and Public Health, addressing the complexity of autism risk, said multiple published studies have concluded that “there is no association between vaccination and the risk for autism. Yet unfortunately this comes up again and again.”
Rosalind J. Wright, MD, MPH, Horace W. Goldsmith Professor in Children’s Health Research and Dean of Translational Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine, discussed the relationship between a mother’s physical response to stress and fetal development. “When you are living with chronic financial strain, violence, and discrimination, it can have effects on the developing baby, starting in pregnancy with particular implications on the developing brain,” she said. On the positive side, she also showed evidence indicating that good nutrition and “sensitive, responsive, supportive care” can buffer young children from the effects of stress.
Dr. Arora called the study of the developing brain a “relay race” in which bench scientists like him supply packets of information that clinicians and researchers in the field can act upon. One of his major contributions is developing new techniques to study human teeth, which have growth rings that each day capture information about chemical exposure and nutrition—a hard drive of biologic information. Dr. Arora advised attendees not to throw away the teeth they shed, saying, “They are more valuable than you think.”
Children who have older siblings or frequent interaction with grandparents are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) earlier than those who do not, according to new research conducted at The Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, and published in the journal Autism. This study is the first to ask not only parents, but also friends and family members who had contact with the child, about their early observations of the child.
“About half of the family and friends who reported being concerned about a child were reluctant to share their concerns,” says Joseph D. Buxbaum, PhD, Director of The Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai and co-author of the paper. “Our work shows the important role that family members and friends can play in the timing of a child’s initial diagnosis of autism. Since early detection of ASD is critical to effective treatment interventions, we hope the study will serve as a call-to-action to encourage family and friends to share concerns early on.”
Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai published results from a pioneering study of asthma patients in the U.S. conducted entirely via iPhone using the Apple ResearchKit framework and the Asthma Health app developed at Mount Sinai with collaborating organizations. The results demonstrated that this approach was successful for large-scale participant enrollment across the country, secure bi-directional data exchange between study investigators and app users, and collection of other useful information such as geolocation, air quality, and device data. The publication appears in Nature Biotechnology.
“The Asthma Mobile Health study represents the coming together of academia and industry to benefit from the ubiquity of smartphones and harness the power of citizen-science to modernize the clinical research process,” said Eric Schadt, PhD, senior author on the paper and the Jean C. and James W. Crystal Professor of Genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Founding Director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology. “We now have the ability to capture rich research data from thousands of individuals to better characterize ‘real world’ patterns of disease, wellness, and behavior. This approach provides a more comprehensive and accurate view of our patients that was not feasible in the past due to logistical limitations and prohibitive costs.”
Diane Meier, MD, director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care at The Mount Sinai Hospital, talks with STAT News about her pioneering work in palliative medicine, which seeks to optimize patients’ quality of life by preventing or reducing their suffering. “The people we’re trying to serve have serious illnesses, and they’re trying to live as well as they can for as long as they can. This notion that somehow you’re braver or smarter or wiser if you confront your death and accept it and plan for it-this is not what most patients and families are seeking. It’s not what most people care about. And it actually can get in the way of people having a good life,” she said.
Sameer Bansilal, MD, MS, an assistant professor of cardiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
For Americans with high blood pressure, cutting back on salt is an important way to help keep the condition under control. Yet, new research shows that these patients are getting more salt in their diet than they did in 1999. Among Hispanics and blacks, sodium consumption increased 26 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Among whites, sodium consumption increased 2 percent, the researchers found.
“You really need to watch the salt in your diet, especially if you are hypertensive,” said study’s senior author Sameer Bansilal, MD, MS, an assistant professor of cardiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “People who eat too much salt are more likely to have uncontrolled hypertension, and they may suffer from complications of hypertension, like heart and kidney dysfunction, and heart attack and stroke,” he said.
Children who have older siblings or frequent interaction with grandparents are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) earlier than those who do not, according to new research conducted at The Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, and published in the journal Autism. This study is the first to ask not only parents, but also friends and family members who had contact with the child, about their early observations of the child.
Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai published results from a pioneering study of asthma patients in the U.S. conducted entirely via iPhone using the Apple ResearchKit framework and the Asthma Health app developed at Mount Sinai with collaborating organizations. The results demonstrated that this approach was successful for large-scale participant enrollment across the country, secure bi-directional data exchange between study investigators and app users, and collection of other useful information such as geolocation, air quality, and device data. The publication appears in 
Diane Meier, MD, director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care at The Mount Sinai Hospital, talks with STAT News about her pioneering work in palliative medicine, which seeks to optimize patients’ quality of life by preventing or reducing their suffering. “The people we’re trying to serve have serious illnesses, and they’re trying to live as well as they can for as long as they can. This notion that somehow you’re braver or smarter or wiser if you confront your death and accept it and plan for it-this is not what most patients and families are seeking. It’s not what most people care about. And it actually can get in the way of people having a good life,” she said.