VA Research Currents archive
In This Issue
Winter 2013-2014
PDF version
Ongoing Research
The VA medical center in Tucson is an adobe-style complex set amid palm trees, cacti, and the blazing Southwest sun. But inside is a brain bank where extreme cold—minus 80 degrees Celsius—keeps specimens well-preserved and ready to be shipped out to research labs throughout VA and worldwide
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Impact on care
Qigong is one of many healing activities offered at the War-Related Illness and Injury Study Center (WRIISC) based at the Washington, DC, VA Medical Center. The WRIISC in the nation's capital is one of three such VA centers nationwide...
Related story: Gulf War corpsman struggling with lingering health issues
While chaplains have long served the needs of service members and Veterans, they are increasingly being seen as a critical link in the effort to provide integrated mental health care services...
Program highlights
Lab renovations have recently been made at dozens of VA sites nationwide, and more are underway or in in the planning stage. The work is part of a major effort, initiated by Congress in 2006, to review the state of VA biomedical labs and make the necessary improvements...
Key findings
Vitamin E, known for its antioxidant power, helped slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease in Veterans with mild to moderate symptoms in a trial reported Jan. 1 in the Journal of the American Medical Association...
An international research team including scientists at the Miami VA Medical Center devised a way to transplant healthy cells into the body without the usual risk of rejection. The study, published online Oct. 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved a middle-aged man with diabetes, but it may be relevant to a range of diseases...
Technology horizons
The Brown University-VA research team that created the investigational BrainGate brain-computer interface won a major international award, the $1 million Moshe Mirilashvili Memorial Fund B.R.A.I.N. Prize, at a brain science technology conference in Israel this past October...
Journal scan
Men with heart problems may be at an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, or even death if they are treated with testosterone therapy, a VA study found...
Maintaining the social support of military peers after active duty is associated with better physical health among women Veterans, regardless of whether or not they have posttraumatic stress disorder, say researchers at the VA Puget Sound Health Care Center...
The third of four planned trials on treating symptomatic mild traumatic brain injury with hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been completed and supports prior research, with researchers saying there are no statistically or clinically significant benefits to the therapy...
Researchers at the Detroit VA Medical Center, collaborating with scientists at the UCL School of Pharmacy in London, suspect extracts from Hypericum olympicum, commonly known as St. John's Wort, may be able to defeat methicillin-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA...
Researchers with VA and Loma Linda University in Southern California have discovered a way to reprogram adult blood cells into stem cells. The research may eventually have implications for patients suffering from a variety of diseases...
Women with a specific genetic variant are less likely to suffer the effects of posttraumatic stress disorder, according to a new VA study...
