NYC Chronicles (Week 6): More Seminal Vesicles and Stephen Colbert

This week during my summer immersion experience, I took a break from my weekly visits to Columbia University Medical Center and decreased my hours of shadowing Dr. Prince in order to spend more time collecting and analyzing data for my project. In addition to compiling data, Dr. Prince and I began writing a research paper on my project regarding the dilation of seminal vesicle lumen diameter in patients with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). The goal of my project is to investigate the genetic disease of ADPKD patients with and without dilated seminal vesicles and to correlate this information with the severity of their renal and extrarenal cystic conditions. (Figure 1, Reis et al) Thus far, we have noticed that ADPKD patients will have developed either dilated or normal seminal vesicles (SV) after puberty (Figure 2), which remains constant over time, and that patients with a specific type of PKD mutation will be more susceptible to developing enlarged seminal vesicles in comparison to the patient groups with different PKD mutations. With this information, we believe there may be an underlying genetic correlation between the size of ADPKD patients’ seminal vesicles and the severity of their disease.


Since I just started learning how to interpret MRI scans only 5 weeks ago, I’ve spent the majority of my time measuring the seminal vesicle volumes of each ADPKD subject (n=90) this week. As of now, I can only measure about 12 subjects in one hour, which excludes the extra time it takes to correct any mistakes that I’ve made. However, I did get faster at locating the seminal vesicles and measuring their volumes more accurately from the previous week, when I could only measure about 7 patients per hour. I must admit that I’m surprised Dr. Prince trusts my judgment in measuring the seminal vesicle volumes independently. So I spend a lot of time double-checking and triple-checking my measurements to be sure I’m not over estimating the SV volume measurements. By next week, I hope to compile all the missing hepatic and renal data that we need in order to adequately test our hypothesis.
Although I spent a lot of time staring at seminal vesicles this week, I did manage to get out the sub-basement of Weill Cornell Imaging Center to see The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, who I absolutely adore. My summer immersion colleague and roommate, Monideepa, was so nice to invite me to see the show with her and I was not disappointed. From Colbert’s nightly monologue to the all the invited guest of the show, I enjoyed every bit of it. In the future, I hope to also attend The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, The VIEW, and the Wendy Williams Show (again).


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