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Clinical Trials at UMDNJ

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Aging
Confronting Alzheimer’s • Decoding Dementias • Parkinson’s, Anxiety and Depression • Exercising the Aging Brain • Moving Forward • Nursing Research Fosters Independence

Pediatrics
Where Kids Volunteer • The Doctor’s Orders: A Cure • More Options for Kids’ Psychiatric Problems • Autism Therapies on Trial

Inflammation
Diagnosis: Scleroderma • Beyond the Standard of Care • The Old Exercise Remedy • For Her Patients’ Sake

Cancer
Staying Alive • New Trials to Beat Cancer • Recruiting Minorities for Cancer Trials • Adding Years With Experimental Therapies • Promising Medicines to Try • Trials for Gastrointestinal Malignancies

Dentistry
Smiling Once Again • The Puzzle of Burning Mouth Syndrome • Down in the Mouth

Women’s Health
Targeting Women’s Cancers • Putting Women First • Help for Headaches • Bringing Basic Science to the Clinic • Sleep and Fibromyalgia Symptoms

Cardiology
Protecting the Heart [and the Brain] • 911: Endangered Heart

Environment
On the Road Again • What’s in the Paint? • Treating Tobacco Dependency and Mental Illness • Kids and Their Environments: a Landmark Study • The Cancer/Clock Connection

Infection
Healthy Volunteers: The Inside Scoop • HIV Has A Female Face • Liver Disease: de la Torre's Dilemma • TB Trials: Secrets to Success

Community
Man with a Mission • Numbers Count  • Battling TB Here and Abroad • Breaking Down Barriers to Cancer Care • Her Happy Ending for HIV Pregnancy • Triggering Change in Transfusion Medicine

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Five Questions with Paula Bistak

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Inflammation
For Her Patients’ Sake
words by maryann brinley

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graduate of Boston University School of Medicine where she earned honors in endocrinology, pathology, pediatrics and anesthesiology, Elizabeth Helfer, MD, believes deeply in her clinical trials work, all sponsored by pharmaceutical companies like Hoffmann-La Roche and Mannkind Corporation. As a principal investigator, this assistant professor of medicine at UMDNJ-School of Osteopathic Medicine (SOM) for the past 10 years, has a wide-ranging list of current trials. “One medication raises the HDL levels in patients with recent cardiac events. Another targets blood sugars and weight in people with diabetes and renal insufficiency,” she reports. Another of her studies aims to control sugar and weight in type II diabetics without kidney problems and she is also currently comparing a new weekly injectable medicine for diabetes to an older twice daily regimen of shots. “The number of participants in each trial varies but we recruit from my own as well as other UMDNJ providers and the community.” Clinical trials nurse “Karen Maslowski is my coordinator and she is the best,” Helfer says.

“I participate in these trials to enable patients to take advantage of medications not yet commercially available. Someone who has failed conventional therapy or who is unwilling or unable to take certain medications” will also benefit from clinical trials, according to Helfer.