Over the last six decades in the U.S., gastric, or stomach, cancer rates have plummeted. But around the world, gastric cancer remains a leading cause of death, particularly in Asia. In an article published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology that reviews the literature on gastric cancer rates, Joo Ha Hwang, MD, PhD, a professor of gastroenterology and hepatology at Stanford Medicine, cites that Asian Americans, particularly Korean Americans, are at an unusually high risk for gastric cancer, despite the disease's rare occurrence among non-Hispanic whites. Hwang discussed the disparity t ..read more

As 2022 comes to close, we're revisiting some of our most popular and well-liked stories -- from how scientists recommend you take care of your mental health to the fascinating (if modestly unappetizing) ins and outs of phlegm. Below we recount what resonated with our readers, the pieces you viewed and read most, and what you tuned in to (again and again) in 2022. Most read Photo by Norbert von der Groeben Stanford scientists decipher the danger of gummy phlegm in severe COVID-19In the sputum -- a mucus-like goop -- of COVID-19 patients requiring intubation, the amount of phlegm skyrockets. Re ..read more

Samuel LeBaron, MD, PhD, is a family medicine specialist and Stanford Medicine professor emeritus who now faces the situation he guided patients through during his career: navigating terminal lung cancer. In his memoir, Ordinary Deaths, published in July, LeBaron weaves personal stories with vignettes that illuminate the patients whose lives he's witnessed. Throughout his career as a family medicine doctor, hospice care provider and technician in a medical examiner's office, LeBaron jotted down stories of his patients, intent to one day share them with his inquisitive children who asked what h ..read more

Writing the lead story for Stanford Medicine magazine is a privilege and a responsibility. It's basically a giant fishhook to entice readers to gobble the rest of the issue (which, I will say, is particularly stellar). My effort, "Human biology at its most basic," introduces our latest themed issue: "Molecules of Life." So my job was to convince all of you that -- molecules are cool! Molecules are fun! Molecules are important! To do so, I considered my bait carefully. A dash of Greek philosophy, a soupçon of chemistry and a pinch of history spiced up a story exploring what makes Stanford Medic ..read more

Every once in a while a story just seems to write itself. That's what happened when I was working on my feature story about vicious DNA circles for the latest issue of Stanford Medicine magazine. Fellow writers will appreciate it when I say that the scientists, Paul Mischel, MD, and Howard Chang, MD, PhD, were quote machines. Their enthusiasm and mutual respect -- born of a chance meeting at a Stanford seminar -- was palpable from our earliest conversations. They made my job (relatively) easy. The article, titled "Vicious Circles," describes how tiny DNA circles -- previously thought to be mer ..read more

When she had breast cancer, Juanita Waugh discovered that there is a lot more to managing the disease than what happens in the doctor's office. She had to learn how to cope with unexpected side effects, such as the brain fog of chemotherapy, and to confront the constant fear and anxiety of what might come next. And she had to do it largely on her own. Now she's joined a group of Black women who are creating a peer navigation program to help newly diagnosed breast cancer patients find a better quality of life and, potentially, a better outcome. "The idea of a peer navigator is that you would ha ..read more

Cancer is a wily, complex disease. To have any chance of beating it, doctors need an arsenal of tools and medications at their disposal. Chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, anti-cancer drugs and an increasing number of immunotherapies, which rev the body's immune system to fight cancer cells, can all play a role in beating back tumors. But which therapies -- or combinations of therapies -- are right for any one patient? James Zou, PhD, assistant professor of biomedical data science, is hoping he can better answer that question by using an algorithm that can predict the success of a cancer treatm ..read more

About 20 years ago, scientists developed a powerful antibody treatment that helps the immune system find and kill tumor cells in neuroblastoma, a cancer that affects very young children, nearly all under age 5. While the antibody treatment has improved survival rates and saved many lives, it doesn't work for every neuroblastoma patient. A Stanford Medicine-led study published July 11 in Nature Cancer, may explain why: Neuroblastoma cells can reroute their development, swerving onto a biological pathway where they keep multiplying and become invisible to the antibody. But the study also showed ..read more

An academic pediatrician rarely gets to jump into the fray when children are at risk in war zones. That's not the case for Stanford Health Policy's Paul Wise, MD, who recently returned from Poland, where he was helping coordinate the evacuation of child cancer patients from the war in Ukraine. Wise, the Richard E. Behrman Professor of Child Health and Society, was serving as a senior adviser in an evacuation program developed by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and a consortium of pediatric cancer programs throughout Eurasia. Through the emergency program, nearly 800 children at ..read more

Unraveling the mysteries of COVID-19 and gritty stories of persistence in the face of pandemic peril took center stage this year on our Scope blog as we continued to share pandemic-themed stories of discovery, patient care, medical education and public safety. The most-read among the stories we published in 2021 reflected our readers' interest in viral discoveries, vaccine development and health care workers' dogged determination, but also in Alzheimers, ADHD in children, maternal health, mental health and more. The five stories that topped this year's list touched on COVID-19, cancer and how ..read more