Author: Chris Amelung

In recent years, sports hernias have sidelined many high-level athletes for months and, occasionally, prevented a return to competitive sports all together. New research at the School of Medicine shows that surgical repair of sports hernias using tension-free mesh, coupled with an innovative rehabilitation program, successfully returned athletes to competition in 93 percent of cases.

GoldbergAnne Carol Goldberg, M.D. was elected president of the National Lipid Association (NLA) at the association’s recent 2007 Annual Scientific Sessions in Scottsdale, Ariz. Goldberg is an associate professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and on staff at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Oncologist Matthew Ellis approaches breast cancer patients like Martha Christmas with an overarching goal: To provide personalized therapy that improves outcomes and preserves quality of life.Over the past two decades, the range of treatments for breast cancer has improved dramatically and so have the survival statistics. Today, more than 80 percent of patients can look forward to long-term freedom from disease. But that still leaves a group of patients with a persistently poor prognosis who need more therapy than the rest. How can outcomes be improved for these women?

StanleySamuel Stanley, vice chancellor of research, has been named an Ambassador in Research!America’s Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research. Stanley is now one of 50 of the nation’s foremost global health experts who have joined forces to increase awareness about the critical need for greater U.S. public and private investment in research to improve global health.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • New treatment for obesity? (week of July 4) • Heading off vaccine side-effects (week of July 11) • Brain’s chain-of-command (week of July 18) • Repairing ‘sports hernias’ (week of July 25)

Lung transplants have been performed successfully for more than 20 years in humans but never before in mice – until now. Surgeons at the School of Medicine have developed the first mouse model of lung transplantation, and they’re hoping it will help explain why the success of the procedure in humans lags far behind other solid organ transplants.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Stress and Alzheimer’s (week of June 6) • Dietary calcium is better (week of June 13) • Treating prostate problems (week of June 20) • Fireworks safety (week of June 27)

The list of reasons you shouldn’t smoke has gotten longer. Researchers at the School of Medicine are reporting that smoking interferes with ligament healing. Each year in the United States there are more than 20 million reported ligament injuries, and MCL injuries — which affect a ligament supporting the knee joint — are the most common. Studying mice with MCL injuries, the team discovered cigarette smoking impairs the recruitment of cells to the injury site and delays healing following ligament repair surgery.

Women who get most of their daily calcium from food have healthier bones than women whose calcium comes mainly from supplemental tablets, say researchers at the School of Medicine. Surprisingly, this is true even though the supplement takers have higher average calcium intake.

An X-ray of a case of scoliosis.Physicians have recognized scoliosis, the abnormal curvature of the spine, since the time of Hippocrates, but its causes have remained a mystery — until now. Researchers at the School of Medicine and collaborating institutions have discovered a gene that underlies the condition, which affects about three percent of all children. The finding lays the groundwork for determining how the genetic defect leads to the C- and S-shaped curves that characterize scoliosis.