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For the seventh year in a row, major medical discoveries from UVA Health have been selected to compete for the title of the preceding year’s most important scientific advance.

The public’s vote will ultimately crown the winner in the online contest, called STAT Madness. The bracket-style tournament is sponsored each year by the prominent health news site STAT to highlight the nation’s most important and influential scientific research. 

Voting opened this morning, and you can (and should!) vote daily here.

STAT Madness operates like the NCAA basketball tournament, with contenders facing off in rounds until there are only two finalists and, ultimately, one big winner.

UVA Health’s contenders this year:

• UVA Health Children’s pediatric pulmonologist Gerald Teague, MD, and colleagues found that nearly a quarter of children with recurrent wheezing have “silent” lung infections that would be better treated with antivirals than commonly prescribed steroids that can carry lifelong side effects, such as stunted growth. This game-changing discovery has the potential to immediately improve the care children receive.
• UVA Health infectious disease expert William A. Petri Jr., MD, PhD, and neuroscience student David Tyus discovered that the portion of our nervous systems responsible for our “fight or flight” response can determine the severity of potentially deadly C. difficile infections. The findings suggest that doctors may be able to save patients from the infections — a plague for hospitals and nursing homes — by using drugs to quiet the hyperactive nervous system.
• University of Virginia School of Medicine researcher Jie Sun, PhD, and collaborators discovered an unknown cause of lingering COVID-19 symptoms long after infection has resolved: Dysfunctional immune cells are preventing the lungs from healing themselves. The discovery could open the door to much-needed new treatments for the respiratory symptoms of long COVID.

The STAT Madness championship round concludes April 6. Make sure to vote UVA every day!