I’m a Spine Doctor. Here’s How I Take Care of My Back
Got back pain? Spine surgeon Patricia Zheng, MD, answers questions about how to reduce your pain and, hopefully, avoid surgery.

University of California San Francisco
Give to UCSFGot back pain? Spine surgeon Patricia Zheng, MD, answers questions about how to reduce your pain and, hopefully, avoid surgery.
Medical imaging scans that create detailed images of the body’s internal structures are widely used in medicine. Doctors need them to detect and manage certain types of cancer, assess the extent
After more than 50 years, the assessment of traumatic brain injuries gets an overhaul. Clinicians say the proposed framework will lead to more accurate diagnoses and treatment, providing more rigorous care for some patients and preventing premature discussions about halting life support in others.
UCSF researchers have found clues about how frontotemporal dementia develops that could lead to new diagnostics and get more patients into clinical trials.
Neurosurgeon Edward Chang, MD, developmental geneticist Thomas Kornberg, PhD, and virologist Raul Andino-Pavlovsky, PhD, have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), one of the highest honors in American science.
This spring, UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Walnut Creek Outpatient Cetner will become one of the only children's hospital on the West Coast to have an intestinal ultrasound (IUS) machine for children with IBD, making for a much better patient experience.
Sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT2i), or gliflozins, are medications used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). They are designed to lower high blood glucose levels
A first-of-its-kind study tested the safety of psilocybin on patients with mild to moderate Parkinson’s disease and found that patients experienced clinically significant improvements in mood, cognition, and motor function that lasted for weeks after the drug was out of their systems.
CT scans may account for 5% of all cancers annually, according to a new study that cautions against overusing and overdosing CTs.
Neuro-immunologist Stephen Hauser, MD, whose maverick thinking transformed the treatment landscape for patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), has received the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
Ten UCSF graduate students presented their research in accessible, 3-minute talks at the 2025 Grad Slam event. This year’s first-place talk was by Sophia Miliotis on how our immune system uses matchmaking skills to look for signs of viruses in cells that should be destroyed.
Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by a host of recognizable cognitive symptoms, but many non-cognitive symptoms like changes in sleep, anxiety and depression can be early signs of the disease.
A study followed the sleep patterns of older female participants to see if specific patterns of change were associated with a higher risk of dementia. The participants, whose average age was 83, were monitored by wrist devices that track movement and time spent asleep.
Locating seizure onset zones is a critical requirement for epilepsy surgery. This often relies upon intracranial recordings, but finding the exact zone can still present challenges. An experimental study capturing seizures on grid electrode arrays of varying density found that higher density grid arrays produced more specificity in seizure onset areas.
Orthopedic surgery experts from UCSF Health will present new clinical research findings and cutting-edge surgical techniques at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ (AAOS) annual meeting.
To help patients recover more quickly, hospitals may provide physical and occupational therapy – especially for older adults to help them preserve or regain function. How much therapy is best, though, isn’t clear.
UCSF received $815 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) last year for research that will improve the lives of patients in the U.S. and around the world.
A paralyzed man was able to move a robotic arm and fingers simply by imagining himself doing so, with the help of brain signals decoded through a computer.
Why do women's brains fare better in aging than men's? A study found that the second, 'silent' X chromosome turns on in the brain of old female mice and improves learning and memory – opening new paths to slow the decline in men and women.
Martin Kampmann, PhD, and Anna Victoria Molofsky, MD, PhD, are the 2025 recipients of the Bowes Biomedical Investigator award, which supports scientists who take novel approaches and have the potential to make significant contributions to biomedicine. Recipients receive $1.25 million over five years.
How did humans evolve brains capable of complex language, civilization, and more? Scientists at UC San Francisco recently found that parts of our chromosomes have evolved at breakneck speeds to give us an edge in brain development compared to apes.