By Amy Widner

Jan. 7, 2019 | Hailey Dougherty, 17, remembers crying from constant pain she was too young to even understand. She didn’t know it yet, but blood vessels were growing out of control and pressing against her 8-year-old brain.

“She would just cry from the time she got up until the time she went to bed,” said Hailey’s mom, Marisa Rokstad.

When Hailey was 12, doctors gave them a name for the condition — arteriovenous malformation — but they didn’t give her a solution. They told her the condition was so rare, dangerous and complicated that there are no medications and they wouldn’t risk performing surgery.

Soon, the renegade blood vessels began expanding on the outside of her skull, deforming Hailey’s face. Hailey remembers being a pre-teen who was in pain, insecure about her looks, and confused.

“I didn’t want to get up in the morning,” Hailey said. “I didn’t want to go to school. I didn’t want to see my friends.

“I remember one of the worst times. A doctor was telling us: ‘We’re going to have to remove a fourth of her face. She’s never going to look the same again. She will look completely different from everyone else.’ And I didn’t really understand. I was so young and I was so confused. I didn’t understand, but it scared me a lot.”

Rokstad was consulting with expert medical centers from across the country. When she called Harvard, they told her to call James Suen, M.D., at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

When Hailey met Suen, a distinguished professor in the College of Medicine Department of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery, Hailey said he was unlike any doctor she had met. Although he characterized her chances of being cured as “maybe 1 percent,” he gave her hope and an action plan for the path ahead. They got to work.

Four years later, Hailey has undergone many procedures and surgeries, the most significant of which involved removing a large part of her skull and the dura covering of her brain. The bone was filled with the malformed blood vessels, so much so that when UAMS neurosurgeon J.D. Day, M.D., who was assisting with the surgery, removed her skull, Hailey lost 10 pints of blood. Without the vascular malformation, a patient wouldn’t even lose half a pint of blood during the same operation, Suen said.

They removed the affected vessels from the lining around her brain, from the tissue in her orbit around her eye and also in her forehead and eyelid. Day used a special material to replace the dura covering her brain and fitted Hailey with a prefabricated prosthetic piece of skull to replace the bony defect.

The stakes were high. If the malformation had spread to Hailey’s brain, it would have killed her. If it had spread to her eye, it would have left her nearly blind. She has very little vision in her opposite eye from childhood.

Hailey continues to see Suen every three months for checkups and treatment with lasers and injections of Bleomycin, a cancer medication that Suen has found to be promising for patients like Hailey. Not only is Suen a leader in the treatment of arteriovenous malformation, he and his colleague, Gresham Richter, M.D., have done research in the area that has literally redefined the field.

“We’ve actually shown that the majority of arteriovenous malformations are very similar to low-grade cancers,” Suen said, explaining that previously, they were thought of as a problem having to do with flow dynamics.

“The recognition that they are actually more similar to cancers leads to new treatment options. Hopefully, AVMs can be treated with these new cancer drugs that can stop the growth and spread of these malformations. Very few drugs have been tried before, but our research will lead to new treatments. Under Dr. Richter’s direction, we have a research lab that’s devoted to just these vascular malformations.”

In October, two years after the major surgery, Hailey underwent an arteriogram to look for signs of the malformation. Hailey and her mother were relieved by good news. There was no sign of anything growing back along her skull or brain or face. Suen found a small spot just inside her eyelid he will continue to monitor.

Is Hailey that 1 percent who found a cure? As a scientist, Suen will only say, “hopefully,” but one thing is for certain: Hailey and her family will keep coming to Suen for his care and expertise as they work to keep the effects of her disease at bay.

“He turned my whole life around,” Hailey said. “He’s an angel sent from heaven, and I’m not kidding when I say that.”

“He couldn’t be a better human being,” Rokstad said. “What she has is scary and painful. It was difficult for us to even find the right care, and then when we did, to have him be so caring on top of having the expertise — it’s phenomenal! Dr. Suen’s team and UAMS have been a godsend for us.”

By Spencer Watson

Laura Hollenbach, M.D., an assistant professor in the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Medicine, has become the first and only physician in Arkansas to be board certified in Obstetrics-Gynecology with Focused Practice Designation in Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology. She mostly sees pediatric patients on the campus of Arkansas Children’s Hospital, where UAMS Department of Pediatrics faculty members practice.

“It’s a relatively new specialty,” said Hollenbach, also the division director for pediatric and adolescent gynecology at Arkansas Children’s. “The American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which certifies OB-GYNs in all subspecialties, has never had a separate examination for pediatric gynecology. But now it’s gotten large enough nationally that this is the first year they’ve offered it.”

Pediatric gynecologists treat patients from birth to age 22. While there is some overlap with general gynecology, certain issues arise specific to children, from structural issues at birth to early or late onset of puberty, that require specialized care, Hollenbach said.

“Kids aren’t just small adults, so we can’t extrapolate the way we treat adult women, with regard to gynecologic care, in the way we treat children. Specialty training in pediatric gynecology allows physicians to learn more about the special reproductive needs of children and adolescents,” she said.

Candidates for the exam were required to meet a certain volume of cases in which they specifically treated children in both operative procedures and clinical care in order to sit for the exam. About 100 candidates were selected nationwide.

“Since this is the first exam ever of its kind, even the people who were writing and contributing to the test had to take it,” Hollenbach said. “That’s kind of a weird phenomenon, but that’s because it was the first one.”

Hollenbach, who was heavily influenced and mentored by Little Rock physician Karen Kozlowski in this area of practice, said it’s rewarding to be among such a small group in a field that has existed as a specific area of research and interest for some time, but is expanding the formalization to a recognized field of specialty care.

“It’s a really tight knit group of people who are focused on this aspect of health care. If my colleagues had a question about a complicated delivery, for example, they could ask each other. Whereas, with this kind of specialty, if I email people, it’s specialists and experts from all across the nation. The people who trained me are the people who wrote the textbook.”

Hollenbach said that she was drawn to and has grown to love her field for its interactions with people, both in teaching residents and students at UAMS and treating younger patients at Arkansas Children’s and statewide through telemedicine.

“Working with children is rewarding in that you have a lot of opportunity to do preventive care and a lot of opportunity to do education,” she said. “While you can still do that in adult medicine, too, I feel you can have a bigger impact as they are still developing their habits and values and learning about themselves.”

Hollenbach, a graduate of Hendrix College in Conway, received her medical degree from UAMS in 2008 and joined the faculty in 2012. In 2014 she began a two-year fellowship in pediatric gynecology at Cincinnati Children Hospital Medical Center and afterward returned to UAMS in her current position.

By Katrina Dupins

For the first time in decades, James Pruss is spending this December making appearances as Santa Claus. Until the Spaghetti with Santa event in North Little Rock on Dec. 2, Pruss says he had forgotten how much he enjoys the gig.

“It’s fun to see the looks on the kids’ faces when they see me – especially the younger ones,” Pruss said. “Some of them are really nervous.”

The requests often put a smile on his face. Some make him laugh out loud.

“An 8-year-old told me he wanted a Camaro. A real Camaro! I’m not sure if his feet would even reach the pedals.”

Others pull at his heart strings.

“She told me she wanted her pawpaw back. I wasn’t quite sure how to answer that one.”

Pruss is able to get back to playing Santa and other hobbies because he no longer has pain in his wrist. He spent 36 years installing and repairing car washing equipment. He’d even built some from the ground-up. Over the years, Pruss would often injure his hands. In 2016 he was looking for a new hand surgeon for a consultation.

“We were in the hospital following my wife’s hip replacement so I started asking around. Everyone told me to see Dr. Wyrick.”

Theresa Wyrick, M.D. is an orthopaedic surgeon at UAMS who specializes in hand and upper extremities. In 2016, she diagnosed Pruss with carpel tunnel syndrome in both hands and cubital tunnel syndrome in his elbows. She repaired his right hand and elbow and Pruss was able to go back to work.

Months later, Pruss reinjured himself when he grabbed a pipe wrench. He’d heard something pop and then felt excruciating pain. He’d had another surgery bu

t the pain remained in his wrist.

“Dr. Wyrick was studying my x-rays and noticed my ulnar bone was too long and that it was impending my nerves and tendons,” Pruss said. “I was game for anything.”

The ulnar and radius are the two long bones in the forearms that extend from the elbow to the wrist. In August Wyrick performed a surgery in which she shortened Pruss’ ulnar bone.

“The idea is that we’re decompressing the outside part of the wrist and making the ulnar bone shorter than the radius bone,” Wyrick said. “It’s a procedure to give function and eliminate pain.”

In his follow-up visit a few weeks later, Pruss told Dr. Wyrick the pain in his wrist was gone. It’d been nagging him for 15 years.

Pruss thanked Wyrick and told her that he was able to get back to doing things he enjoyed because his wrist felt better, including playing Santa Claus.

“Using the skills I’ve learned to serve others and ultimately get them back to the things they love is rewarding,” Wyrick said. “I helped him. And now he’s brining joy to others this holiday season.”

Wyrick’s children, 8 and 4, took photos with Santa at a Christmas party this year. They were excited to learn that their mom fixed his hand.

“Dr. Wyrick will sit and talk to you like she’s known you all your life,” Pruss said. “She’s one of the most caring doctors I’ve ever had.”

Gregory Sharp, M.D., Professor and Chief of Pediatric Neurology in the College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), has been named Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH).

Dr. Sharp has held numerous clinical, academic and hospital leadership posts since first joining the faculty as an Assistant Professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Neurology in 1990. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996 and to Professor in 2006. He has served as Chief of Pediatric Neurology since 2007 and also led the section in 1998-2003.

Key leadership roles have included Chief of the Medical Staff at ACH since July 2017 and Vice-Chief of Medical Staff for two years prior to that. He has served since 2017 on the ACH Board of Directors and numerous ACH leadership committees including the Medical Staff Executive Committee, Child Health Practice Council and ACH Board Quality and Safety Committee.

Dr. Sharp has served as Medical Director of the Neuroscience Center and Neuroscience Inpatient Unit at ACH since 1998. He directed the Neurophysiology Lab in 1996-2000 and 2002-2017. Dr. Sharp was Co-Director of the Arkansas Comprehensive Epilepsy Program in 1990-1995. He has held the John H. Bornhofen Endowed Chair in Child Neurology at ACH since 2008.

Dr. Sharp received his medical degree from the UAMS College of Medicine in 1984. He completed his residency in pediatrics at UAMS and ACH and served as Chief Resident in 1986-1987 before continuing his training with a pediatric neurology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1987-1990.

By Ben Boulden

Dec. 13, 2018 | UAMS researcher Clint Kilts, Ph.D., was named an Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA) Fellow at a news conference today at the State Capitol.

Kilts was presented with a certificate by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, ARA CEO Jerry Adams and UAMS Chancellor Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA. ARA Fellows from university campuses receive a $75,000 grant.

“Dr. Kilts is applying technology to real world problems like drug abuse and prevention, responses to sexual trauma, and dealing with health issues like schizophrenia,” Patterson said. “His research has been groundbreaking providing opportunities to take technology into the community and have a direct impact on people here in Arkansas and across the United States. Clint, congratulations on your accomplishments, and we are so proud of you for being the next ARA Fellow at UAMS.”

Kilts is the founding director of the Brain Imaging Research Center at the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute, an associate director of the institute and a professor in the UAMS Department of Psychiatry in the UAMS College of Medicine. He holds the Wilbur D. Mills Endowed Chair in Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention.

The ARA Fellows program, launched in 2014, recognizes research leaders who are currently working in Arkansas at one of the state’s five research campuses. The program was created to advance the mission of ARA by supporting world-class researchers whose work strengthens the competitiveness of the state through research.

ARA Fellows focus on innovations in biomedical engineering, plant biochemistry, nanoscience, microbiology, nutritional improvements, electronics research and more, often resulting in a direct impact on the state’s economy.

Kilts said he will likely use the grant as seed money for a project to study brain maturation responses in pre-school students served by Head Start as well as a second project.

“I started a community science initiative about a year and a half ago with the idea of having the community direct science,” Kilt said. “If they responded to a broad poll, what would they want us to study? I may use the grant for a community-responsive, community-directed initiative.”

In 2009, Kilts joined the faculty at UAMS. He has a long record of National Institutes of Health-funded research, most recently in functional, molecular and connectivity imaging of the living brain to explore the neural network processing basis of human behavior.

With a focus on drug abuse and addiction, Kilts’ clinical research focuses on the use of neuroimaging technology to define the brain basis of psychiatric disorders and their treatment. His goal as director of the center is to extend magnetic resonance imaging-based technology and human neuroscience to areas of clinical problem-solving in psychiatry and related disciplines.

Kilts received his postgraduate training in psychopharmacology and neurochemistry in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Michigan State University. He continued his training in neuropharmacology, analytical neurochemistry, and human psychopharmacology in the Biological Sciences Research Center at the University of North Carolina. Kilts has been a member of the faculty and worked as a researcher at Duke University and Emory University School of Medicine.

The other five new ARA Fellows recognized at the news conference and joining the existing ARA Scholars and Fellows are: Nitin Agarwal, Ph.D., University of Arkansas at Little Rock, distinguished professor in the Information Science Department; Jingyi Chen, Ph.D., University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Steven Foley, Ph.D., National Center for Toxicological Research, deputy director of the Division of Microbiology; Xiuzhen Huang, Ph.D., Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, professor in the Department of Computer Science; and Mansour Mortazavi, Ph.D., University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, professor and vice chancellor.

Previously named ARA Fellows from UAMS are Laura James, M.D., director of the UAMS Translational Research Institute; Michael Owens, Ph. D., a professor in the UAMS College of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology; and Mark Smeltzer, Ph.D., professor in the UAMS Department of Microbiology and Immunology and director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Inflammatory Responses.

By David Robinson

Dec. 7, 2018 | Nearly everyone in the audience raised their hand when Curtis Lowery, M.D., asked if they used their smartphones for banking or making purchases. In welcoming UAMS’ first Digital Health Conference on Nov. 30, he told the 80-plus attendees the health care industry has been frustratingly slow to follow the banking industry’s embrace of digital technology.

“It is unacceptable for me in women’s health to have maternal deaths that are preventable,” said Lowery, a nationally recognized pioneer and innovator in the use of telemedicine who chairs the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the UAMS College of Medicine. “We can do something about it.”

The conference gave researchers and health care providers an overview of the fast evolving digital health technologies and a chance to learn more specifically about the current lag in policies and regulations, and the endless opportunities this technology brings to providers and patients.

Digital health includes interactive video (telemedicine, telehealth), wearable devices, implantable devices, smartphone applications, robotics, augmented intelligence and machine learning.

UAMS digital health researcher Carolyn Greene, Ph.D., associate professor in the College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, said the day-long conference was a valuable use of her time.

“I loved that there was an opportunity to think about research and the promise of digital health in the future, but also we got a chance to hear about all the incredible digital health work that’s happening right now across the UAMS campuses and across the state,” she said. “As a clinician, you want to know about the shiny objects – you know, the exciting stuff – but sometimes your ability to really use it depends on being able to get reimbursed for it. I thought the conference did a good job of discussing some of those practical aspects also.”

The conference’s keynote speakers were Penny Mohr from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), where she is senior advisor for Emerging Technology and Delivery System Innovation Research Initiatives; and Mei Wa Kwong, J.D., executive director of the Center for Connected Health Policy, the federally designated National Telehealth Policy Resource Center.

“I really enjoyed hearing Mei Wa Kwong talk,” said Sarah Rhoads, Ph.D., D.N.P., a former UAMS faculty researcher and now a professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Memphis. “She did a great job simplifying and explaining the payment for mobile health and telehealth and telemedicine and the issues surrounding remote patient monitoring. It’s very important to know what the payers are willing to pay for when it comes to implementing technology.”

Rhoads also said she enjoyed Mohr’s perspective on what PCORI can and cannot fund. “It just provided a lot of clarity for me,” she said.

Health systems are behind other industries in adopting digital technologies in part because government policies haven’t kept pace with the advances, said Anita Walden, M.S., a conference organizer and instructor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the UAMS College of Medicine.

“Patients are looking forward to using digital technologies, and the industry companies and the payers are moving forward with trying to implement it,” Walden said. “They need the providers to catch up.”

Despite the challenges, Lowery said that UAMS, with the strong support of Chancellor Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA, will lead the state in adoption of digital health technologies.

“I think over the next few years we’re going to build the most modern, connected health care delivery system in the nation because we’re the only teaching hospital in the state and we have a lot of really rural and poor hospital systems everywhere,” he said. “I think all of us are committed to changing that.”

In the next five years, he predicted, the same percentage who are banking on their phones today will be receiving health care through their mobile devices.

John Paul Nolan, a research participant and Community Advisory Board member for a UAMS research study, urged Lowery and other UAMS leaders to take the lead in digital health care. Holmes, a veteran, said an expansion of telemedicine is desperately needed in rural communities. In small towns, residents notice whose vehicle is parked at a mental health clinic. Because of the stigma, people who need help often don’t get it. If mental health services could be provided via interactive video to a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, that scenario could be avoided.

“UAMS is poised to provide care,” Nolan said. With smartphones and other mobile devices, “In that moment of crisis, they don’t have to get out of the house. Those are the things we need to be looking at. UAMS brings a very powerful chip to the table because of its infrastructure, its national and international partners and the way that it is set up to study and to disseminate the information to make the public more aware of what’s going on.”

The Digital Health Conference was sponsored by the UAMS Office of Interprofessional Education, with support from the UAMS Center for Distance Health, the Department of Biomedical Informatics, South Central Telehealth Resource Center, and the UAMS Translational Research Institute.

By Spencer Watson

Nov. 28, 2018 | To most people, ultrasound is associated with taking pictures of babies in the womb. But it has become part of a technology revolution that is helping physicians provide better care for all types of patients.

More than 100 students from the UAMS College of Medicine as well as other medical schools in Arkansas recently gathered on the 10^th floor of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute for a Saturday of learning about the clinical applications of ultrasound technology.

The event, called Ultrafest, was intended to give students exposure to and hands-on experience with a variety of point-of-care ultrasound applications, from obstetrics to applications in cardiovascular and ophthalmic exams to ultrasound-guided procedures. Ultrafest was first started at the University of California Irvine in 2012. The idea for the event has since spread to several medical schools across the country. This was the first event of its kind in the Arkansas region.

“Bedside ultrasound, or what we call point-of-care ultrasound, has completely changed the way physicians care for patients,” said Brian Russ, D.O., a UAMS emergency medicine resident who helped organize the event. “As ultrasound technology gets more portable with machines becoming smaller, cheaper and better, it’s become a go-to method to make diagnoses more rapid and more accurately guide procedures at the bedside so that physicians can make better decisions and perform safer procedures in caring for patients.”

“It’s kind of a theory that bedside or even ‘pocket’ ultrasound is going to replace the stethoscope as the staple tool of the physician,” agreed John Martindale, a third-year medical student who helped organize the event.

Following a keynote address from Creagh Boulger, M.D., emergency medicine faculty and associate director of ultrasound at Ohio State University, the morning was spent with medical students learning from instructors, who demonstrated ultrasound techniques and applications on volunteer “patients,” models who were recruited from nearby universities. During lunch, students had the opportunity to form teams and compete in a fun and friendly ultrasound competition, further testing their skills and reinforcing concepts.

“We had 20 college student volunteers, most of them pre-med, who were themselves hoping to get some experience and learn some interesting things about ultrasound,” said Russ. “It was really neat for them. I was teaching the pulmonary station, and the student who was my model at the station was pointing out structures and lung artifacts, helping to teach by the end of the day.”

Of course, the volunteer patients weren’t the only ones there to learn. Medical students who attended also befitted tremendously, said Martindale, who is part of the UAMS Ultrasound Student Interest Group leadership team. Organizing the event was a significant undertaking by the  student group and faculty mentors involving needs such as room and audiovisual reservations, recruiting faculty instructors and volunteer patients, advertising to students, catering and inviting industry vendors of ultrasound equipment to have enough machines for the event. Students had the opportunity to use some of the “latest and greatest” machines marketed towards point-of-care ultrasound users.

“This is technology we’ve had for decades, but the computing capacity is what’s changed. And just like any other field with computers, what we can do with that technology now is continuing to change very quickly. It’s important to stay on top of it,” Martindale said. “As a medical student, getting exposure early on, just like with anything else, makes you more proficient down the line, so when you get into residency and you’re seeing a hundred patients a day, that’s one less thing you have to learn.”

Perhaps surprisingly, many medical students don’t get consistent exposure to ultrasound during their medical education, even with its growing importance in patient care, Russ said.

“Right now, only about 25 percent of the medical schools in the United States have an integrated ultrasound curriculum, and those that do vary in degree in which the ultrasound is integrated,” he said. “We’re lucky here at UAMS. The students do get a fully integrated ultrasound curriculum during their first and second years. But what we’re doing through Ultrafest is building on their ultrasound foundation and teaching them the clinical applications and how they can make a difference for patients, with the focus on hands-on scanning time.”

Both Martindale and Russ said, with this year’s success, they plan to make Ultrafest into an annual event.

“Bedside ultrasound is quickly becoming a depended-upon resource in the medical field. Everyone is familiar with traditional uses of ultrasound in medicine — looking at babies in the womb, but the way we use it at the bedside is what has made it such as powerful tool,” Martindale said.

“We’re empowering these medical students to be the leaders in this point-of-care ultrasound revolution and to continue the change in medicine that started about 20 years ago and has continued to accelerate because of the improving technology available,” Russ said. “It’s been described as a disruptive technology in medicine because it really is changing how we provide patient care.”

By Spencer Watson

Nov. 27, 2018 | A variety of solutions with which to attack the ongoing national opioid epidemic took center stage at the 22^nd Showcase of Medical Discoveries, held Nov. 14 in the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.

The series is intended to foster scientific collaboration by sharing research through social receptions with poster presentations. It is sponsored by the College of Medicine and Division of Research.

“One thing I learned in my time of being an investigator is you need a variety of approaches to solve a problem,” said Lawrence Cornett, Ph.D., UAMS associate vice chancellor for research. “That’s why team science is so valuable and why collaborations are so valuable. You want to have diverse viewpoints thinking about the problem and how to solve it. If you only take a single path to the solution, a lot of times you’re going to fail.”

The research on display included exploring viable medications to use as an alternative to opioids, to treatment of addiction as well as withdrawal, to studying emerging illicit opioids to understand their effects on abusers. That work included not only presentations from UAMS researchers, but researchers from the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System, which adjoins the UAMS campus.

“I think you need to take every possible approach to this problem,” said Rick Owen, M.D., associate chief of staff for research with Veterans Affairs (VA) and a professor of psychiatry in the UAMS College of Medicine. “My background is in implementation science and health services research, so the fact that there are a few posters on actually implementing change and how to approach that is very impressive.”

Among those was the work of student researcher Mary Thannisch, who presented work done in collaboration with Benjamin Teeter, Ph.D., of the UAMS College of Pharmacy, on finding ways to increase prescription of overdose prevention medication naloxone among pharmacists.

“Last year, Arkansas passed a law allowing pharmacists to prescribe naloxone to the public instead of going to a physician. But since that’s happened, the prescription rate has not been very high. There’s a certain stigma attached to naloxone, because most people think it’s only for addicts,” Thannisch said. “However, in addition to addicts, our research also targets the accidental overdoses that might happen, such as in older patients on multiple medications” or in households with very young children.

Thannisch said the work included studying ways for pharmacists, who in many cases – particularly in independently owned pharmacies – know their patients personally, to start a conversation about prescribing naloxone with opioids as a preventative measure. However, their surveys showed many pharmacists don’t quite feel they have the right training to begin those conversations.

“So what we came up with were conversation guides, a laminated sheet of paper they can keep in the pharmacy for each target patient they would be looking at.”

Ravi Nahata, M.D., a UAMS assistant professor and staff psychiatrist with the VA, presented work that gauged the acceptability and interest of opioid-addicted patients to using naltrexone, a medication often used to treat heroin addicts. Nahata said he and fellow researchers hypothesized opioid users would be hesitant to explore the medication for fear of stigma, but found exactly the opposite reaction in surveys.

“Our hypothesis was that people exposed to methadone or Suboxone would be less interested in naltrexone, but our finding was actually the opposite. People with exposure were likely to consider it,” he said.

The survey also collected data from those who were not interested in naltrexone. Their reasons included fear of needles, potential side effects, prohibitive cost and simply not being ready to end opioid use.

While there is still much work to do in combating the multifaceted problem of opioid use throughout the United States, events such as the showcase not only help further research by fostering collaboration, they demonstrate the vital role academic research centers like UAMS play in finding solutions.

“I think the public recognizes that academic research centers are where research is done to improve human health, so I think they expect us to take the lead. If not us, then who else is going to do it?” said Cornett.

“This is the kind of problem that really hits home when you know people who have been affected by it,” said Owen. “You know people who have become addicted or have been in treatment or you know of families that have had a family member overdose. People can identify with that.”

Poster presentations at the showcase included:

Management of Infants Exposed in utero to Opioids

Researchers: Jeanette Lee and Jessica Snowden

The Effects of P-glycoprotein Inhibition on Norbuprenorphine-induced Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS)

Researchers: Paloma Salazar, Williams T. Higgins, Lisa Brents

Morphine 6-O-Sulfate is a Novel Mixed µ/δ Opioid Therapeutic for Diabetic Neuropathy: Pharmacology, Pharmacokinetics, and Blood Brain Barrier Permeability

Researchers: Jai Shankar K. Yadlapalli, Zaineb Albayati, Benjamin M. Ford, Amit Ketkar, Anqi Wan, Narasimha Penthala, Robert Eoff, Paul L. Prather, Howard Hendrickson, Maxim Dobretsov and Peter A. Crooks

Improving Opioid Use Disorder Treatment Outcomes with the L-type Calcium Channel Blocker Isradipine

Researchers: A.H. Oliveto, J. McGaugh, J.B. Guise, J. Thostenson and M.J. Mancino

A Survey of Treatment Preferences for Opioid Use Disorder

Researchers: R. Nahata, M.J. Mancino, J. Thostenson, A. Oliveto

Community Pharmacists’ Perceptions of Their Role in the Opioid Epidemic

Researchers: Benjamin Teeter, Geoffrey Curran, Bradley Martin, Patricia Freeman, Karen Drummond, Katharine Bradley, Mark Edlund

In vivo Abuse Liability Assessment of Novel Fentanyl Analogues: Science to Guide Drug Policy

Researchers: William E. Fantegrossi, Kyle R. Urquhart, Saki Fukuda, Jyoti Gogoi, Timothy Flanigan and Takato Hiranita

A Comparison of the Antinociceptive Effects of ZZ204G, an α9α10 nAChRs Antagonist and Morphine in a Rodent Model

Researchers: Anqu Wani, Jai Shankar K. Yadlapalli, E. Kim Fifer, Maxim Dobretsov, Zaineb Albayati and Peter A, Crooks

In vivo Dependence Liability Assessment of Novel Fentanyl Analogues: Science to Guide Drug Policy

Researchers: Kyle R. Urquhart, Saki Fukuda, Jyoti Gogoi, Timothy Flanigan, Takato Hiranita and William E. Fantegrossi

Development of G-protein Biased Cannabinoid Receptor Agonists as Potential Alternatives to Opioid Treatment of Chronic Pain

Researchers: Paul L. Prather, Narsimha R. Renthala, William E. Fantegrossi and Peter A. Crooks

Evidence Based Quality Improvement (EBQI) for Development and Implementation of Community Pharmacist-Initiated Prescribing and Dispensing of Naloxone

Researchers: Mary Thannisch, Benjamin Teeter, Geoffrey Curran, Duane Jones, Bradley Martin, Nickolas Zaller