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Nov 21, 2019
FSU News
Biomedical Sciences student shares top honors at FSU's Three Minute Thesis competition
PRESS RELEASE

Florida State University’s annual Three Minute Thesis competition is an opportunity for doctoral students to practice explaining their work to a non-specialized audience, whether that’s a group of business executives, legislators who want to know more or a student’s curious grandparents at Thanksgiving dinner. 

Judges selected Alyssa Henderson, a doctoral student in the Department of Physics, and Sara Jones, a doctoral student in the College of Medicine's Department of Biomedical Sciences, as this year’s first-place winners. They each earned a $1,000 prize and advance to a regional competition. 

Jones explained her research on how the artificial sweetener aspartame could cause anxious behavior that fathers may pass down to their offspring. She studies how exposure to aspartame affects whether certain genes are turned on or off, and how those changes are passed to descendants, a concept known as transgenerational transmission.

“I hope this research gets us thinking about that concept,” she said. “It has global implications for today and for generations to come.”

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Nov 21, 2019
Biomedical Sciences student shares top honors at FSU's Three Minute Thesis competition (FSU News)

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Nov 20, 2019
PRWeb
PRESS RELEASE

The Department of Geriatrics at the FSU College of Medicine and the USF School of Aging Studies launched a campaign focused on education surrounding pain awareness, pain management, and safe use, storage and disposal of pain medicines.

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Nov 20, 2019
Daily Mail
PRESS RELEASE

A team of researchers in the lab of Mohamed Kabbaj at the FSU College of Medicine studied ketamine's effect on alcohol consumption in mice.

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Nov 19, 2019
News Medical
PRESS RELEASE

A team of researchers in the lab of Mohamed Kabbaj at the FSU College of Medicine studied ketamine's effect on alcohol consumption in mice.

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Nov 20, 2019
Tallahassee Democrat
PRESS RELEASE

In an article for the Tallahassee Democrat, Tomeka Norton-Brown, project coordinator for ACTS 2 wrote, "Caregivers are some of the strongest people I know. They’re dedicated, reliable and selfless. In my line of work, we also know that selflessness – though admirable – can be harmful to your health." Her article was written in recognition of National Family Caregivers Month.

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Nov 20, 2019
FSU News
PRESS RELEASE

Research from Mohamed Kabbaj, a professor of Biomedical Sciences and Neuroscience at the College of Medicine, showed that ketamine can decrease alcohol consumption in male rats that previously had consumed high amounts of alcohol when given unrestricted access several times a week.

Press Release

FSU Research: Ketamine Could Help Men Suffering From Alcohol Use Disorder

CONTACT: Bill Wellock, University Communications
(850) 645-1504; wwellock@fsu.edu

@FSUResearch

November 2019


TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Research from Florida State University is giving physicians a better understanding of ketamine, a potentially useful tool in treating depression that still has unanswered questions.
 
A team of researchers working in the laboratory of Mohamed Kabbaj, a professor of Biomedical Sciences and Neuroscience in the College of Medicine, showed that ketamine can decrease alcohol consumption in male rats that previously had consumed high amounts of alcohol when given unrestricted access several times a week. The neuroscience journal eNeuro published the research in its November edition.
 
There are no perfect treatments for alcoholism, Kabbaj said. Many patients relapse within a year after treatment.
 
“What makes ketamine interesting in our study is that it reduced alcohol intake, and the effect was long-lasting even after we stopped ketamine treatment,” he said.
 
Ketamine is a promising frontier in psychiatric treatment. Existing antidepressants don’t work for all patients, so scientists are looking for other effective options. Ketamine is one possibility. In March 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a nasal spray that includes a form of ketamine for use on patients with depression who didn’t respond to other treatments.
 
But doctors still have questions about how ketamine works. This latest research is one piece of a larger investigation by Kabbaj’s team to learn more about the drug, specifically its interactions with alcohol, the number one drug abused by depressed patients.
 
In this study, researchers examined how ketamine affected the rats’ alcohol consumption and how that alcohol intake affected their self-administration of ketamine.
 
The major finding in the study was that high-alcohol intake male rats displayed a significant reduction in alcohol consumption after a regimen of ketamine compared to rats that received a saline solution. The effect lasted for at least three weeks even after stopping ketamine treatment, suggesting a long-term benefit of ketamine in reducing alcohol use.
 
“Three weeks is a long time in a rat’s life,” Kabbaj said. “If a similar thing happened in humans, one could imagine that after a short treatment with ketamine, alcoholic patients would cease alcohol intake for a couple of years. That would be a great achievement.”
 
Ketamine didn’t affect high-alcohol female rats, and interestingly, it increased drinking in low-alcohol females. Researchers said clinical studies for men and for women are needed before ketamine is used as a therapy for alcoholism in either sex.
 
The National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse provided funding for this study.
 

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Dean's Message, November 2019

Nov 15, 2019

Dear faculty, staff, and students:

I have heard many of you ask how we did in our LCME site visit and what the final determination of the LCME was.  I am writing to provide follow-up on both our April 2019 LCME site visit and their review of our program.   The LCME met last month in Chicago to review the final report of the site visit team.  I again want to thank all the faculty, staff, and students who worked so hard preparing for our site visit and meeting with the site visit team when they were here from 14-17 April.  We received the Draft Site Visit Survey Report from the Team Secretary in July and had an opportunity to respond to areas that we felt were not accurately assessed.  The final Survey Team Report and the Final Letter from the LCME last month did not result in significant changes after that review. 

 I refer you to my e-mail of 8/2/2019 which outlined the many areas where the team found we met or exceeded expectations.  A group of us met with the Secretariat of the LCME at the AAMC meeting this past Monday to get further clarification on their areas of concern.  Now that we have the final report from the LCME and our conversation with them, we better understand the specific areas we need to work on to maintain full compliance with the accreditation standards and where the team had concerns. I am confident that we can easily fix each of those areas and none place our educational program at risk.  Our school is still fully accredited by the LCME and I continue to be very proud of our model, our great students, our faculty and our staff.   We will have a LCME Secretariat visit this summer to provide consultation on our action plans to move into full compliance with the standards and I anticipate this will be a very productive visit.

Thank you for all you do every day to make this such a great place to work and thrive.  Go Noles!  

J.

John P. Fogarty, M.D.

Dean

Florida State University College of Medicine

 

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Nov 14, 2019
Healio
PRESS RELEASE

AAA projects that approximately 20% of all drivers will be 65 years of age or older by 2030. During a presentation at the American College of Physicians annual meeting, FSU College of Medicine Professor Alice Pomidor discussed the difficulty in knowing when a patient should hand over his or her car keys. Pomidor went on to discuss how physicians should address the topic.

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