Petrie Dish

In the second part of Petrie Dish’s exploration of loneliness, host Bonnie Petrie looks at what it takes to fight isolation, from teen gathering spaces to libraries and “chatty cafes,” and how communities can be designed to bring people together.

In rural Texas, severely injured patients often wait more than two hours to reach specialized trauma care. A UT Health San Antonio trauma surgeon is co-leading an effort to change that with an AI tool designed to help emergency doctors make faster transfer decisions that can mean the difference between life and death.

The UT Health San Antonio professor who is leading an effort to increase the number of South Texas teens who are vaccinated against the human papillomavirus hopes to see cervical cancer eliminated in the United States in her lifetime.

The annual summer COVID wave hasn't peaked yet, and flu season is on the way, but this year brings new options to fight back. From a prophylactic pill you can take after exposure to COVID to a faster-made mRNA flu shot, Dr. Jason Bowling of UT Health San Antonio breaks down the new options.

Every organ in your body keeps its own internal clock, and UT Health San Antonio researcher Kevin Koronowski is studying how that clock controls fat metabolism. His lab is investigating a protein pair that decides when the body burns fat and when it stores it, work that could eventually improve treatments for metabolic disease.

When doctors can't identify a fungal infection, they often turn to UT Health San Antonio's Fungus Testing Laboratory, which has discovered more than 60 new species since 2013. The lab is now racing to fight drug-resistant fungi while helping bring new antifungal treatments to market.

A new UT Health San Antonio study finds that any amount of physical activity can slow cognitive decline in older adults, with Mexican Americans showing the greatest benefit. Researchers say the findings highlight a need for community investment in accessible spaces for movement and social connection.

Kirsten Eom studies everything that goes into getting a cancer survivor from their front door to a doctor's office: insurance, transportation, follow-up care, and more. The UT Health San Antonio researcher has found that a surprising number of survivors stop seeing doctors once initial treatment ends. Now she's working to build a statewide registry to track the barriers keeping them away.

Loneliness doesn't just feel bad. It appears to raise the risk of heart disease, dementia, and early death. In part one of a two-part Petrie Dish series on the loneliness crisis, Bonnie Petrie talks to a researcher separating marmoset monkeys from their mates to study the body's stress response, and a psychiatrist mapping what isolation does to the human brain.

A UT San Antonio researcher warns that dementia cases could triple by 2050 and that no health system on earth is ready for it. But Dr. Claudia Suemoto says the outlook isn't hopeless: everyday choices around exercise, diet, and community can meaningfully lower your risk, especially if you start by around age 35.