Disease linked to untreated risk factors in early adult years As many as 1 in 100 black men and women develop heart failure before the age of 50, 20 times the rate in whites in this age group, according to new findings published in the March 19 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine by a UCSF research team.

San Francisco officials paid tribute to the late children’s health advocate on Arbor Day, and her legacy lives on through a recently established scholarship fund at UCSF and the new Ellen Wolfe Children’s Center at San Francisco General Hospital.

The Symphony Parnassus concert on March 29 in San Francisco will feature 12 current and former UCSF students, faculty and staff.

Mammography is widely used to screen for tumors in young women – even women in their 20s – who inherit a genetic mutation that confers a very high risk for breast cancer. But new research now suggests that exposing the youngest of these women to even small doses of radiation via screening mammograms might do more harm than good.

Older adults who drink one to two glasses of alcohol per day are 25 percent less at risk of death from any cause than people who drink more than that and those who do not drink at all, according to a study by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.

Researchers with the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, a five-year, nationwide, longitudinal study of possible markers of Alzheimer’s disease, announced that a genomic analysis of the 800 participants in the study is more than 95 percent complete, and that the data will be shared with scientists around the world for further analysis.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine will host a forum on stem cell research progress on March 18 – a timely event, given President Obama’s new policy that allows the use of federal funds to conduct research on human embryonic stem cells.

UCSF has received one of the largest gifts in its 145-year history – $125 million – as the lead funding for a state-of-the-art medical center at the Mission Bay campus.

In its effort to advance translational medicine – the application of scientific discoveries to patient care – UCSF is undergoing a physical transformation to create a campus where science, medicine and industry blend harmoniously.