Friday, June 13, 2025

UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital pioneers use of new non-opioid painkiller after surgery

Hospital is state’s first to approve use of new FDA-approved analgesic

University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio

SAN ANTONIO, June 11, 2025 – Showing its leadership in addressing the opioid crisis, the UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital is the state’s first to approve use of a new non-opioid medication for pain following orthopaedic and podiatric surgeries.

The effort is part of UT Health San Antonio’s “multimodal” approach to pain management, combining non-opioid medications and physical therapy, at its hospital that opened Dec. 10 to provide specialty surgery, advanced imaging and comprehensive cancer care.

The new drug suzetrigine, brand name Journavx, is not a controlled substance and avoids opioid-related side effects. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January and first became available in April.

And its manufacturer confirmed that the Multispecialty and Research Hospital is the first in Texas to add it to its approved list of inpatient medications as a first-line treatment for post-surgical pain, restricted to orthopaedic and podiatric surgical patients.

“At UT Health San Antonio, we are committed to newer strategies to minimize and even eliminate narcotic pain medication after surgery,” said Christopher D. Chaput, MD, vice chief of staff and chair of orthopaedic surgery at the UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital. “Narcotics, in addition to the risk of addiction, have a range of other negative side effects after surgery including sedation, mental status change and constipation. Instead, we use local and regional nerve blocks, as well as newer non-narcotic medications to reduce the need for opiate based medications.

“Nursing and physical therapists can also help with pain control techniques and early mobilization, which has been shown to improve outcomes and lessen pain,” he said. “At the new Multispecialty and Research Hospital, anesthesiologists, pharmacists, nurses and surgeons are all working towards this same goal for our postoperative patients.”

The type of post-surgical pain associated with orthopaedics is the target indication for the newly approved medication, said Lee C. Rogers, DPM, clinical associate professor of orthopaedics and chief of podiatry at UT Health San Antonio.

“It could be spine, or a total joint or a bunion,” Rogers said. “This is a way to use innovative and effective pain management approaches that avoid opioids and their side effects.”

A national study of suzetrigine actually was done with bunion surgery, which is a common pain model for research. Rather than targeting the central nervous system of the brain and spinal cord, like opioids do, the new drug targets the peripheral nervous system, or the network of nerves that connects the central nervous system with the rest of the body.

It is comparable to hydromorphone, a potent opioid medication for moderate to severe post-operative pain, only without the narcotic side effects of addiction, tolerance, drowsiness and other issues.

“This is a significant milestone for UT Health San Antonio,” said Jeff Flowers, chief executive officer of the UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital. “Offering this new non-opioid option for post-surgical pain reflects our continued commitment to compassionate, patient-centered care. By integrating the latest advances into our pain management strategy, we’re improving recovery for our patients while also reducing reliance on opioids across South Texas.”

UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital is a best-in-class hospital delivering specialty surgeries and advanced cancer care including immunologic and stem cell therapies. The hospital brings the most innovative research conducted across South Texas and features modern technology such as touchless designs and advanced artificial intelligence. It is directly connected to the Mays Cancer Center — the only National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in South Texas. This patient- and family-centered hospital offers a seamless health care experience and renewed hope for patients and those who love them.

UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital is part of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio), a primary driver for San Antonio’s $44.1 billion health care and biosciences sector with an annual research portfolio and sponsored program activity of more than $436 million. The university is one of the country’s leading health science and research universities with missions of teaching, research and patient care. UT Health San Antonio plans continued growth over the next five years and anticipates adding more than 1,500 higher-wage jobs to serve San Antonio, Bexar County and the South Texas region.

Stay connected with UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Toddlers’ eye movements predict ability to judge memories, new research suggests

University of California - Davis

The simple act of looking and comparing may be the first step toward learning how to judge what we remember, a skill that is fundamental to learning and making decisions.

New research from the University of California, Davis, has found that toddlers who tend to look more closely at and compare paired images during a memory task are more aware of the accuracy of their own memories a year later. This finding connects the earliest process of seeking information with the developing ability to judge the accuracy of memories.

“Although little kids are not necessarily aware about what they are doing when they look at objects, the practice of collecting and evaluating information while trying to make a decision may provide the foundation for the development of memory-introspection skills over time,” said lead author Simona Ghetti, a professor of psychology in the College of Letters and Science and Center for Mind and Brain.

The study was published June 11 in Nature Communications.

How kids judge their memories

The paper comes from a longitudinal study Ghetti and her co-authors conducted with 176 toddlers. At 2 years old, the children looked at pairs of images and picked which one they thought had been shown to them already. A year later, they completed the same task, but this time the researchers also asked them how confident they were in their choice.

In both rounds of data collection, the research team monitored the process with eye trackers that could measure how many times the children looked back and forth between the two images.

The study tested metamemory monitoring, which is our ability to judge how well a memory reflects reality. It makes us feel more confident when our memories reflect what we saw or experienced and makes us feel uncertain when our memories are faulty, alerting us to avoid mistakes. This ability is fundamental for learning and making decisions.

Children don’t have this skill until they reach 3 or 4 years old. However, even infants look for information they need, often by turning to an adult, which Ghetti said might be a way of evaluating what they remember.

Weighing options builds skills in judging memories

The results showed that the number of times children looked at both images and how often they got the right answer at 2 years of age predicted their ability to accurately judge what they remembered a year later.

This suggests that toddlers who tend to compare their options before deciding might get more practice at thinking about what they remember. This practice led to toddlers being better able to recognize when their memories were accurate or when they made mistakes. They reported feeling more confident after a correct response and more uncertain after a mistake.

A surprising result was that knowing about mental states — their own and others’ — as well as the language to describe them, had no connection to being able to judge memories at 3 years old.

“Having a theory of mind and the language to describe mental states may not be essential for the initial emergence of metamemory monitoring,” said Sarah Leckey, a former UC Davis Ph.D. graduate student in psychology and first author. “But these abilities may become more relevant later in childhood, when metamemory becomes more sophisticated.”

An additional author on the paper is Diana Selmeczy, an assistant professor in psychology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. This study was funded by the National Science Foundation and preparation of the manuscript was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-025-60273-8

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Two-year-olds’ visual exploration of response options during memory decisions predicts metamemory monitoring one year later.

Article Publication Date

11-Jun-2025

Isolated Torrey pine populations yield insights into genetic diversity

Researchers find a few genes that allowed trees from insular populations to adapt to local conditions may inhibit their adjustment long term to a new location

Penn State

Researcher stands among Torrey pine trees in southern California — image:
Study co-first author Alayna Mead, postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, stands among Torrey pine trees in southern California.
view more
Credit: Penn State

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Entire regions of trees are disappearing because of invasive pests, disease and a changing climate. The key to their ability to adapt to varied growing conditions and, ultimately, their survival, may reside in the complex genetic makeup of replacement trees, according to forest geneticists tasked with reintroducing tree species. A study of one of the rarest pine trees in the world, Torrey pine, conducted by a team including Penn State scientists, has yielded what the researchers called valuable insight into the value of genetic diversity and the importance of ensuring locally adapted diversity is maintained for restoration.

They published their findings in Evolutionary Applications.

“To conserve species with extremely low genetic diversity, introducing new genetic variation from one population to another can be beneficial, providing a ‘rescue’ to facilitate evolution and species adaptation,” said team leader and senior author Jill Hamilton, Penn State associate professor in ecosystem science and management and director of the university’s Schatz Center for Tree Molecular Genetics. “But we show that in some cases where populations have evolved in isolation, like Torrey pine, caution may be warranted when considering the introduction of new variation.”

Critically endangered Torrey pine persists naturally across only one island and one coastal mainland population in southern California. Using a common garden experiment established in 2007 by the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station that contains trees from both populations and hybrids from interbreeding, the researchers compared fitness between the island population of Torrey pines, the mainland population and hybrids of the two. They identified genetic variants within the two populations that may indicate reproductive barriers have evolved between the island and mainland populations.

To evaluate the genomic and fitness consequences of interpopulation gene flow or “rescue,” the researchers extracted DNA from the pine needles of all three groups and sequenced it, identifying regions where the DNA sequence varied among individuals. They evaluated whether some of these genetic regions were responsible for differences in growth and cone production among the island and mainland population and their hybrids.

Hamilton’s research group in the College of Agricultural Sciences has studied the plight of Torrey pine over the last decade and how it may yield lessons that could guide efforts to save tree species in peril in the Eastern U.S. such as ash and American chestnut.

Study co-first author Alayna Mead, postdoctoral scholar working in Hamilton’s lab, noted that the unique history of the Torrey pine makes it an ideal system to study conservation genetics. Its two limited populations have been separated for a long time, and they’re adapted to their local climates, she explained. So, if populations have evolved barriers to reproduction n, interpopulation rescue via hybridization could negatively impact the fertility and health of hybrid offspring.

“Around 1.2 million years ago, on the coast of California, Torrey pine colonized an island, and since then, this pine species has persisted through multiple glacial periods and, eventually, warming and drying of California's climate,” Mead said. “Now, only two populations remain, one mainland and one island, both with very low genetic diversity, which could restrict their ability to adapt to a rapidly warming climate.”

Hybrids between the island and mainland population grow faster than their parents, suggesting increased genetic rescue could be beneficial, Mead noted. However, the two populations may have adapted differently to the island and mainland climates, so hybrids planted in nature may carry genes that are adapted to the wrong climate.

“To test whether hybridization could impact the fitness of future generations, we looked for genes with low levels of mixing between island and mainland variants, which could indicate that island and mainland variants are incompatible and prevent pollination or cause young trees to die,” she said. “For one of these genetic variants, having a mainland-type variant was associated with higher growth and cone production when trees were planted in a mainland garden.”

Hamilton suggested that the findings of the Torrey pines study could inform efforts by Penn State’s Schatz Center and others to rescue trees species in the East decimated by invasive disease and pests.

“For example, in Pennsylvania, forest geneticists are working to manage our forests under climate change,” she said. “Unlike Torrey pine, populations are not separated by the ocean, but habitat fragmentation and ‘sky islands’ — where tree species have retreated to deal with warmer climatic conditions — on mountain peaks have caused more recent barriers. Genetics will be important to determining when and where introducing new genetic diversity could be beneficial to restoration efforts.”

Co-first author on the study, Lionel Di Santo, who was a member of Hamilton’s research group at North Dakota State University before Hamilton came to Penn State, is now a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Jessica Wright, research geneticist for the Pacific Southwest Research Station, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Placerville, California, contributed to the research.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service Health Protection Gene Conservation Program and Western Wildlands Environmental Threat Assessment Center funded this research.

One of the two isolated populations of Torrey pines is on Santa Rosa Island (shown here), off the coast of southern California.
The researchers suggest that the findings of the Torrey pines study could inform efforts by Penn State’s Schatz Center and others to rescue trees species in the East decimated by invasive disease and pests.
Credit
Penn State