Patients treated for acute heart attacks in the United States are readmitted within 30 days more often than in other countries, a finding explained in part by significantly shorter initial hospitalizations, according to an international study led by researchers at Duke University Medical Center. The study, published in the Jan. 4, 2012, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association , found that 60 percent of severe heart attack patients enrolled in the United States were discharged in three days or less, yet 14.5 percent of the U.S.

Five scientists from Duke University Medical Center and three from Duke University have been chosen for the distinct honor of fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

A discovery in fruit flies may be able to tell us more about how animals, including humans, sense potentially dangerous discomforts. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center uncovered naturally occurring variations of a gene named TRPA1 that is important for the function of pain-sensing neurons throughout the animal kingdom. The gene makes an ion channel, which floods sensory neurons with calcium ions when the fly is near a heat source, causing fruit fly larvae to respond with a corkscrew-style rolling motion away from the heat source.  View a video of an escaping larva .

One of the most comprehensive studies to date of the microbes that are found in extremely low-birthweight infants found that hard-to-treat Candida fungus is often present, as well as some harmful bacteria and parasites. Researchers at the Duke University Medical Center and Nicholas School of the Environment looked at the microbes in 11 premature infants and found much less diversity than in full-term infants. “The babies’ guts were taken over by microbes we know are dangerous if they get into the blood,” said senior author Patrick Seed, MD, PhD , assistant professor of pediatrics at Duke

Gary H. Lyman, MD, MPH , a professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center, has been elected to the board of directors of the American Society of Clinical Oncology , which is the leading professional organization representing more than 30,000 oncologists and others who care for people with cancer. Lyman will begin his four-year appointment in June 2012

Tracking individual cells within the lung as they move around and multiply has given Duke University researchers new insights into the causes of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a disease which can only be treated now by lung transplantation . IPF fills the delicate gas exchange region of the lung with scar tissue, progressively restricting breathing. The Duke University Medical Center researchers have discovered that some commonly held ideas about the origins of the scar-forming (fibrotic) cells are oversimplified, if not wrong