University of Iowa Children’s Hospital ranks among the best children’s hospitals in the United States according to a survey conducted by Parents magazine.

Parents surveyed more than 100 children’s hospitals to determine where the more than 3 million American children hospitalized each year can get the best care possible. The results of the extensive survey will appear in the February 2009 issue of Parents magazine, on newsstands nationwide Jan. 13, 2009.

According to the survey, UI Children’s Hospital is the 20th ranked pediatric hospital in America. In addition, the pediatric emergency care provided in the Emergency Treatment Center at UI Hospitals and Clinics is rated fifth in the nation.

“We are honored that our highly skilled and dedicated doctors, nurses and hospital staff have received this richly-deserved recognition,” said Dr. Michael Artman, physician-in-chief at UI Children’s Hospital. “Their devotion to our patients, their use of leading edge technologies and advanced treatments, and our commitment to family-centered care resulted in our team earning this distinction.”

“We have a long-standing commitment to providing excellent emergency care to children and their families,” said Dr. Eric Dickson, professor and head of the UI Department of Emergency Medicine. “Receiving national attention for our efforts is welcome confirmation of our success.”

A complete list of the best children’s hospitals by specialty can be found online.

Full news release.

The CCOM Food Drive over the holiday season was a great success. College faculty, staff and students donated a total of 281 pounds of food and $515 in cash donations to be given to the Johnson County Crisis Center Food Bank.

Thank you to all who participated and helped to make this community outreach activity such a success.

Men consistently outperform women on spatial tasks, including mental rotation, which is the ability to identify how a 3-D object would appear if rotated in space. Now, a University of Iowa study shows a connection between this sex-linked ability and the structure of the parietal lobe, the brain region that controls this type of skill.

The parietal lobe was already known to differ between men and women, with women’s parietal lobes having proportionally thicker cortexes or “grey matter.” But this difference was never linked back to actual performance differences on the mental rotation test.

UI researchers found that a thicker cortex in the parietal lobe in women is associated with poorer mental rotation ability, and in a new structural discovery, that the surface area of the parietal lobe is increased in men, compared to women. Moreover, in men, the greater parietal lobe surface area is directly related to better performance on mental rotation tasks. The study results were published online Nov. 5 by the journal Brain and Cognition.

Full news release.

Dr. John Wemmie, UI associate professor of psychiatry and neurosurgery and a staff physician and researcher at the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Medical Center, has received a three-year, $300,000 McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Award. Wemmie will use the award to help develop imaging techniques to measure and understand the influence of pH on normal brain function and disease. One of only six such awards given this year, the funding supports innovative efforts aimed at translating basic laboratory discoveries in neuroscience into clinical benefits for patients.

Wemmie and co-principal investigator Dr. Vincent Magnotta, UI associate professor of radiology, psychiatry and biomedical engineering, will use the funding to develop magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based strategies to accurately and non-invasively measure pH in mouse and human brains, and apply those techniques to investigate changes in brain acidity during fear responses. Magnotta also is a member of the Iowa Institute for Biomedical Imaging.

Normal neurological activity, and also brain injury and disease, produce fluctuations in brain tissue acidity. These pH changes occur rapidly and may be relatively small, making them difficult to monitor. Recent studies, including research from Wemmie’s lab, have used animal models to identify acid-sensing ion channels as key players in anxiety disorders, stroke, seizures and multiple sclerosis.

“It is possible that this pH signaling system involving brain acidity and acid-sensing proteins could be enabling or contributing to the development of panic disorder and anxiety disorders,” Wemmie said. “So, if we can monitor the pH signal it might provide an opportunity to intervene in these disorders.”

Full news release.

Another tragic loss

Colleagues,

The entire College is deeply saddened by the sudden and tragic death of third-year medical student Ibrahim Saadi in an automobile crash over the weekend. Our condolences go out to the Saadi family and to Ibrahim’s many, many friends. He will be greatly missed by all of us.

The College will hold an M3 class meeting tomorrow (Tuesday, January 12) at 4:15 p.m. in the 1110A MERF auditorium to give third-year students a chance to gather together and support each other following the tragic loss of Ibrahim. Any other student who knew Ibrahim is also welcome to attend. The clerkship directors have been asked to excuse students from their clinical responsibilities to attend this meeting. A memorial service, planned by students and staff, will be held after his burial in Galilee.

Ibrahim, who was 26, grew up a Palestinian in Israel. His experiences in that environment deeply influenced his decision to become a physician.

As Ginnie Woodard said in an interview with the media: “He had this huge passion about serving people in a way that would help eliminate health disparities, because he saw them all the time in Israel.”

Ibrahim was drawn to internal medicine because it stimulated his clinical reasoning and fostered the kind of patient care he desired to offer. He was a volunteer with the mobile clinic, AMSA, and Doctors Without Borders.

He had recently become engaged to be married. His parents visited the College last summer and everyone who met them was extremely impressed with their warmth and friendliness.

In addition to his parents in Jerusalem, Saadi also leaves behind his fiancée, Stephanie, in Iowa City and two sisters, one of whom lives in Des Moines, as well as his many friends.

UI Health Care’s unique, integrated approach to revenue management is leading to unprecedented financial efficiencies and garnering national recognition, leaders recently announced.

Beginning in November, UI Health Care adopted an integrated structure for revenue management that encompassed the entire enterprise. The innovative effort allowed closer collaboration and a more seamless flow among finance specialists in the CCOM, UI Physicians, and UI Hospitals and Clinics.

The project is paying large dividends. The Joint Office of Revenue Integrity reports that it has recovered more than $20 million in hospital payments from insurers that UI Health Care would not have received otherwise in the past four years.

“I would say that 98 to 99 percent of the time our payors do a great job of providing us correct and accurate payments,” said Tom Mentz, director of revenue integrity for UI Health Care. “Our integrated structure, sophisticated tools and dedicated team allow us to find those few needles in the haystack and to recover all the payments we are entitled to receive.”

Full news release.

Mourning the loss of two bright students

Colleagues,

We were deeply saddened to learn of the tragic deaths of Sean Connolly and Sarah Pulvermacher, two of our graduate students in, respectively, the Immunology Graduate Program and Microbiology. Sean and Sarah, who were engaged to be married next year, were killed in a traffic accident Wednesday, December 17. Their passing is an enormous loss for the University, the College, and the scientific community. Please join me in offering condolences to their family, friends and colleagues.

Sean worked in the lab of Jon Houtman and Sarah worked in the lab of George Stauffer. Sarah had completed her doctoral studies and would have graduated last Saturday. Sean and Sarah were both known for their intellectual curiosity and engaging personalities.

Sean was a great person to be around, always quick with a smile and joke.  Outside of the laboratory, he loved sports, especially golf, and Hawkeye football.

Sarah came from a family of Wisconsin Badger fans. They had planned to be married the weekend of next year’s Iowa-Wisconsin football game. Sarah had a fantastic personality — warm, engaging and friendly. She had many friends and was a person to whom others would turn for advice and suggestions. Those who knew them say they were a perfect couple.

Sean’s funeral will be Monday at 10 a.m. at Assumption Catholic Church in Granger, Iowa. Sarah’s wake will be Monday night from 4-9 p.m at Farber Funeral Home in Reedsburg, Wis., and her funeral mass will be Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Reedsburg.

The families are also planning a joint memorial service for Sarah and Sean in Iowa City after the first of the year.

A University of Iowa-led international research team has found a new gene associated with the brain disorder epilepsy. While the PRICKLE1 gene mutation was specific to a rare form of epilepsy, the study results could help lead to new ideas for overall epilepsy treatment.

The findings, which involved nearly two dozen institutions from six different countries, appear in the Nov. 7 issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.

“The study results were surprising not only because the PRICKLE1 gene had never been associated with epilepsy but also because the gene was not associated with any other human disease,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Alex Bassuk, M.D., UI assistant professor of pediatrics.

Full news release.

Image: “PRICKLE1 gene expression appears in green in human brain cells, with neurons appearing in red and nuclei in blue. Mutated PRICKLE1 gene has been implicated as a cause of a certain form of epilepsy.”

Image Credit:  American Journal of Human Genetics, Vol. 83, Issue 5, Bassuk et al., Figure 3e from “Homozygous Mutation in Human PRICKLE1 Causes an Autosomal-Recessive Progressive Myoclonus Epilepsy-Ataxia Syndrome,” 572-581, Copyright Elsevier, Nov. 7, 2008.

Dr. Steven Lentz, UI professor of internal medicine, has been appointed to the Henry Hamilton Chair in Hematology. The new five-year term was effective July 1. Lentz previously held a five-year appointment to the Henry Hamilton Professorship of Hematology.

The endowed chair honors Dr. Henry Hamilton, a professor of internal medicine whose UI connection spanned nearly 50 years as both a student andfaculty member. Hamilton died in 1986. The chair was established through the UI Foundation by a bequest from the estate of John and Oral Sebelin of Davenport, Iowa. John Sebelin credited Henry Hamilton with saving his life. Oral Sebelin was a UI alumna.

Dr. Sarah England, UI associate professor of molecular physiology and biophysics, received the 2008 Academic Innovation and Leadership (Post-Secondary) Award from the Technology Association of Iowa at the Iowa Women of Innovation Banquet in Des Moines on Nov. 11.

England was appointed special assistant to the vice president for medical affairs in July 2007. Serving at 20 percent time, England advises the vice president on various health policy matters and makes recommendations regarding opportunities for pursuing strategic initiatives.

England joined the UI in 1997. Her research focuses on the role of potassium channels in regulating smooth muscle function, as they pertain to women’s reproductive health and premature labor. In 2005 she was one of seven health professionals nationwide to be named to a prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellowship and served in the office of U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton. England also serves as director of the Iowa Biosciences Advantage Program, which identifies academically talented undergraduate underrepresented minority students with aspirations for research careers and provides them with first-rate training to facilitate their entry into doctoral programs in the biomedical, behavioral, and biophysical sciences.

England received a bachelor’s degree from Carleton College and a PhD from the Medical College of Wisconsin.