The Tulane Addiction Medicine Fellowship, offered by the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the School of Medicine, is a one-year fellowship that trains physicians in the treatment, prevention and recovery of individuals with addiction. Completion of the fellowship leads to board certification in addiction medicine.

The Tulane Center for Brain Health and Merging Vets and Players (MVP) have formed a partnership to establish an MVP Chapter in New Orleans to support military veterans and former professional football players in addressing the challenges they face in transition to “normal life” once the uniform comes off.

A blood test developed by Tulane researchers combines nanotechnology with artificial intelligence to diagnose tuberculosis (TB) in children. The nanotechnology allows scientists to see small components of the bacteria that causes TB. The test accurately detected TB in 89% of children who were known to have confirmed TB and identified 74% of children with unconfirmed TB that standard tests missed.

Using CRISPR analysis, School of Medicine researchers have developed a highly sensitive blood test for tuberculosis that screens for DNA fragments of the bacteria that cause the disease. The test can deliver results within two hours. Dr. Tony Hu, Weatherhead Presidential Chair in Biotechnology Innovation and professor in biochemistry and molecular biology, biomedical engineering, and microbiology, is lead author of the study.

Dr. Jacques Courseault, assistant professor of sports medicine at the School of Medicine, has opened one of the world’s first Ehlers-Danlos syndrome clinics, the Tulane Hypermobility Clinic. The Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is a group of inherited genetic conditions that affects connective tissue. The idea to open the clinic came after Courseault saw several patients with a range of symptoms resembling the syndrome.

A study led by Dr. Nassir Marrouche, director of the Tulane Heart and Vascular Institute, shows that the simple approach — compared to advanced image-guided technology to aggressively target diseased areas of the heart — has better patient outcomes when it comes to ablation, a procedure that destroys cardiac tissue to correct irregular heart rhythms, also known as atrial fibrillation.

A research team led by Dr. Samir El-Dahr, Jane B. Aron Professor and chair of pediatrics at the School of Medicine, examined why human kidneys, which are composed of nearly a million filter units, stop creating new filter cells after birth. The researchers used a mouse model to understand what occurs when a fetal stem cell differentiates into a mature kidney cell. Researchers found that near the time of birth, the DNA blueprint that controls the fate of kidney stem cells changes dramatically.