2025 News Feed

Pennington Biomedical Researchers Assemble Comprehensive History of Electronic Health Records and their Role in Medical Research
Dr. Yun Shen and Dr. Gang Hu of Pennington Biomedical Research Center have recently published a piece in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, or JMIR. The study titled “Twenty-Five Years of Evolution and Hurdles in Electronic Health Records and Interoperability in Medical Research: Comprehensive Review,” explores how electronic health records’ use in medical research has evolved over the past 25 years. Dr. Shen and Dr. Hu have extensive experience in working with electronic health records to study chronic diseases, population health trends, and predictive analytics.
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Pennington Biomedical’s Dr. Kaja Falkenhain Awarded Postdoctoral Fellowship from the American Heart Association
Dr. Kaja Falkenhain, postdoctoral researcher at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, has been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association. The fellowship comes with a grant of over $150,000 to be used over two years to support Dr. Falkenhain's research project, titled “Craving Control: Rewiring the Reward Circuitry of the Human Brain in the Modern Food Environment,” which will study the brain’s reward circuitry and ingestive behavior at the intersection of obesity medication and modern food environment.
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Pennington Biomedical Research Foundation’s Annual Fundraiser ‘The Answer’ Celebrates 10th Anniversary
Pennington Biomedical Research Foundation, the fundraising support partner for Pennington Biomedical Research Center, is hosting its annual signature fundraising event “The Answer” on Friday, March 21, at 5:30 p.m. at the C.B. Pennington Conference Center on the campus of Pennington Biomedical. To celebrate The Answer’s 10th anniversary of generating support for the research center’s biomedical breakthroughs, the night’s theme will be “Decades of Discovery.”
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Pennington Biomedical Contributes to Study Advancing Medical Imaging on Body Fat and Muscle Distribution
A recent study introduces an innovative method for analyzing body composition using advanced 3D imaging and deep learning techniques. This approach aims to provide more accurate assessments of body fat and muscle distribution, which are crucial for understanding health risks associated with various conditions. The study, “3D Convolutional Deep Learning for Nonlinear Estimation of Body Composition from Whole Body Morphology,” authored by researchers from Pennington Biomedical Research Center, University of Washington, University of Hawaii and University of California-San Francisco was recently published in NPJ Digital Medicine, a journal of the Nature portfolio.
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Opportunities to Contribute to Science
To date, more than 65,000 people have been screened to participate in a clinical trial at Pennington Biomedical Research Center. Kytara Gaudin Christophe and her daughter, Chloe, share their experiences as Pennington Biomedical trial participants.
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Pennington Biomedical’s Pediatric Obesity and Health Behavior Laboratory Authors Childhood Obesity’s Most Downloaded Paper of 2024
"Closing the Gap Between Evidence and Practice for Childhood Obesity Treatment," authored by Pennington Biomedical’s Pediatric Obesity and Health Behavior Laboratory’s Dr. Amanda Staiano and Dr. Alyssa Button, was the most downloaded paper in 2024 from Childhood Obesity, a leading peer-reviewed journal dedicated to strategies for obesity prevention and weight management in children and adolescents.
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Pennington Biomedical Researchers Serve on Global Commission on Clinical Obesity that Goes Beyond BMI in Defining Obesity as a Disease
Three researchers from Pennington Biomedical Research Center served on the Lancet Commission on Clinical Obesity, a global group that generated a new approach to diagnosing clinical obesity. The diagnosis is based on evaluations in addition to body mass index, or BMI, such as measures of excess body fat and objective signs and symptoms of ill health at the individual level.
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The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology: Global Commission Proposes Major Overhaul of Obesity Diagnosis
A global Commission, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology and endorsed by more than 75 medical organisations around the world, presents a novel, nuanced approach to diagnose obesity, based on other measures of excess body fat in addition to body mass index (BMI), and objective signs and symptoms of ill health at the individual level.
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Monoclonal Antibody Ponsegromab Shown to Reduce Effects of Cancer-Related Wasting Syndrome
Cachexia, also known as wasting syndrome, commonly occurs in patients with certain cancers, leading to dangerous weight loss and functional impairment. Medicinal treatments for this condition are rare, but a recent study demonstrated that the antibody ponsegromab is both safe and effective in treating muscle wasting and weight loss in cancer patients. Pennington Biomedical Research Center was one of more than 70 facilities globally to host the study testing the efficacy of this antibody.
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Global Launch for Clinical Obesity Definition to be Held Jan. 16, Pennington Biomedical Serving as North American Satellite Hub
The Lancet Commission on Clinical Obesity, a globally representative group of 56 worldwide experts, are publishing the first ever definition of clinical obesity at a launch event on Jan. 16. The event will be teleconferenced to various locations across the globe originating from the Royal College of Physicians in London, with the Pennington Biomedical Research Center serving as the satellite site for North America.
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