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The Office of Diversity Affairs at LSU Health Shreveport hosted students from Mansfield High School in Shreveport, Louisiana for a day with our medical students, faculty and staff to learn more about careers in medicine.

Monique Harris-Gaspard was confined to a wheelchair when she reached out to Dr. Anthony Sin at LSU Health Shreveport. Dr. Sin is internationally recognized for his work in spinal deformity and has been instrumental in providing feedback leading to innovative technologies in complex spine surgeries and robotics.

KSLA12 - LSU Health Shreveport's associate professor of pediatrics and pediatric neoncologist, Dr. Nitin Walyat answers questions for concerned parents of infants regarding the current formula shortages.

Bossier Press - Fortune, the American business magazine, recently named LSU Health Shreveport’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program fourth in the nation in its first-ever MPH program ranking. The MPH program is a collaborative effort between LSU Shreveport and LSU Health Shreveport. 

KTBS3 - Dr. Paari Dominic, LSUHS associate professor of cardiology, used the Remede device to help 76-year-old Calvin Hightower get a safer sleep. Once implanted, Remede works like a pacemaker for the diaphragm, sending a signal to the phrenic nerve to stimulate the body to breathe.

KTBS3 - LSUHS and BRF’s Center for Molecular Imaging and Therapy are partnering to bring a national Alzheimer’s disease study to the area. The study is for patients with mild cognitive impairment and dementia with a focus on minority populations in underserved areas.

The Biomechanics Lab compares different surgical techniques side-by-side, with the goal of getting people back to work and athletes back to sport sooner. Dr. Giovanni Solitro, lab director, shares, “What I really love about this work is that it allows us to be protagonists. We can bring more innovation to the patient.”

Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy was instrumental in the receipt of this funding for LSUHS, which will enhance the impact of the Center for Emerging Viral Threats (CEVT) as it is able to expand significantly in the new Center for Medical Education building. Additional medical education and research opportunities will yield enhanced economic impact to the region and the state.

Aaron Sheppard, a second-year medical student at the LSU Health Shreveport School of Medicine, has been selected to participate in the 2022-2023 class of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Medical Research Scholars Program (MRSP).

LSU - J. Steven Alexander, PhD, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at LSU Health Shreveport, didn’t expect his biggest innovation to come from a nuisance he’d experienced once or twice during an otherwise nice swim.

KTBS3 - “We know that in our families, many of them have different health problems. They have pain, they have inflammation, they have higher incidences of diabetes, hypertension,” said Dr. Sushil Jain, professor at LSUHS. “And it is shown that if we improve vitamin D level, we can reduce the disease.”

Shreveport Times - LSUHS faculty published an article in the Journal of the AAOS, which is being used by institutions around the country for guidelines on elective and urgent surgical selection for orthopaedics during the COVID-19 pandemic.

41NBC - Mercer University School of Medicine, in partnership with the Department of Biomedical Sciences and LSU Health Shreveport, was recently awarded a $25,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The money will help to guide Covid-19 research about possible variants of the virus.

“These gifts will provide fundamental support for the CEVT for years to come as we continue to address the public health needs of the North Louisiana region and beyond,” said LSU Health Shreveport Vice Chancellor for Research, Chris Kevil, PhD

LSU Office of Research - While almost all research on addiction to stimulants (such as meth and cocaine) remains focused on dopamine and the body’s pleasure-and-reward system, a researcher at LSU Health Shreveport, Nicholas Goeders, took a different approach. Instead of reward, he looked at stress.

Bossier Press - Fortune, the American business magazine, recently named LSU Health Shreveport’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program fourth in the nation in its first-ever MPH program ranking. The MPH program is a collaborative effort between LSU Shreveport and LSU Health Shreveport. 

Graduate Student Appreciation Week was a week long celebration of our students in the School of Graduate Studies and included a Town Hall, along with wellness and social events.

The LSU Health Sciences Foundation of Shreveport hosted a Topping Out Ceremony celebrating the final structural beam being placed at the Center for Medical Education at LSU Health Shreveport on Wednesday, March 30. In addition, Ochsner LSU Health System announced an additional $8 million gift to the project.

The annual LSUHS School of Allied Health Professions (SAHP) Research Night event took place Thursday, March 17^th, 2022. The SAHP Grants and Research Committee selected twenty two peer-reviewed research posters representing most of the programs in the school.

140 LSUHS School of Medicine students learned where they will go for their residency training on March 18, 2022. For Match applicants, Match Day symbolizes the transition from undergraduate to graduate medical education, the day when they learn which residency training program they will attend as they begin their careers as physicians.

Second-year medical students at LSU Health Shreveport's School of Medicine celebrated a milestone in their journey to becoming a physician, when they donned their white coats on Saturday, March 5, 2022.

Frontiers in Psychiatry - Dr. Marie Vazquez Morgan, Asst. Vice Chancellor of Institutional Wellness shares, "LSUHS is committed to reducing student burnout by assessing and addressing the issues causing and fueling poor mental student health and by providing an academic environment that values wellness and self-care."

LSU Health Shreveport has named Dr. James Morris as the inaugural Assistant Dean for Graduate Medical Education and Dr. Shane Barton as the inaugural Assistant Dean for Faculty Development.

The Office of Diversity Affairs at LSU Health Shreveport hosted students from Mansfield High School in Shreveport, Louisiana for a day with our medical students, faculty and staff to learn more about careers in medicine.

Monique Harris-Gaspard was confined to a wheelchair when she reached out to Dr. Anthony Sin at LSU Health Shreveport. Dr. Sin is internationally recognized for his work in spinal deformity and has been instrumental in providing feedback leading to innovative technologies in complex spine surgeries and robotics.

KSLA12 - LSU Health Shreveport's associate professor of pediatrics and pediatric neoncologist, Dr. Nitin Walyat answers questions for concerned parents of infants regarding the current formula shortages.

KTBS3 - Dr. Paari Dominic, LSUHS associate professor of cardiology, used the Remede device to help 76-year-old Calvin Hightower get a safer sleep. Once implanted, Remede works like a pacemaker for the diaphragm, sending a signal to the phrenic nerve to stimulate the body to breathe.

Red River Radio: Health Matters - Dr. Shawn McNeil, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at LSUHS hosts a discussion on recognizing autism in children and therapies and treatments to support children with autism with other LSUHS professionals. 

KSLA12 - Heart disease accounted for nearly 875 thousand deaths across the country in 2019, according to the American Heart Association. Dr. Tarek Helmy, professor and division chief of cardiology at LSUHS, said this is a prevalent issue in northwest Louisiana. Join the walk to raise awareness.

KTBS3 - Dr. Jamie Toms, LSUHS Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery, says Parkinson’s disease affects how the brain produces a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine is one of the chemicals in the brain known as a “feel good neurotransmitter.” With Parkinson’s, when the brain stops making dopamine like it should, depression can set in.

LSU Health Shreveport participated in the annual LSU Day at the Capitol. LSUHS along with LSU Health New Orleans and Pennington Biomedical Research Center staffed a health fair for members of the legislature and their staff.

KTAL6 -  Local health experts say the BA.2 omicron variant of the coronavirus has been on the rise across the country and is now the dominant strain in NW Louisiana. “As mysteriously as the virus came on, it’s kind of evolved and become a little less problematic when people get it,” said Dr. Michael Sewell, Section Chief for Division of Internal Medicine / Hospitalist Program.

KSLA12 - Beginning Tuesday, April 19, the Center for Emerging Viral Threats (CEVT) at LSUHS will no longer offer COVID-19 testing at its North Campus site. This change is due to the low number of COVID-19 cases reported in recent weeks. A look at the Louisiana Department of Health’s COVID case map shows the cases are low across the state.

Boston25 - “We are seeing the prevalence of BA.2 increasing as the overall Omicron wave has crashed,” said Jeremy Kamil, PhD, associate professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. “It is spreading. It can infect people who were previously vaccinated, particularly if they didn’t have a case of BA1.”

KTBS3 - Shelly Raley, the Program Coordinator for the LSUHS COVID Strike Team, says that circumstances make this current slowdown more calming than previous ones. "Currently there is no big delta or omicron that we see headed our way in the immediate future."

NBC News - Scientists have detected a handful of cases of the delta-omicron hybrid but say it's unlikely to cause a new surge. Dr. Jeremy Kamil, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at LSUHS says, "Delta basically grabbed omicron's spike protein. This is essentially delta trying to hang on by plagiarizing from omicron."

Bloomberg - “I’m convinced that home testing is artificially lowering rates … and by a  lot,” says Jeremy Kamil, a virologist at LSUHS. “Especially when you factor in the additional impact of mild cases and pandemic fatigue.”

NPR - Dr. Jeremy Kamil, LSUHS Virologist, says these studies, along with several others published recently, are really tipping the scales toward an animal origin.

NPR Red River Radio - Health Matters: Andrew Yurochko, PhD and Krista Queen, PhD talk about COVID Sequencing – why it matters and how LSU Health Shreveport is contributing to this international conversation. 

Bloomberg - “No tests can tell you for sure what variant you have without full viral genome sequencing,” says Jeremy Kamil, a microbiologist and immunologist at LSU Health Shreveport. In the U.S., current federal guidance prevents labs from informing patients or their physicians about the specific genome-sequencing results.

The Philadelphia Inquirer - In addition to becoming more abundant with each exposure, the antibody response becomes more “mature,” saidDr. Jeremy Kamil, associate professor at LSUHS.