Author: Chris Amelung

Restricting calories may mean living longer.Can eating a low-calorie yet nutritionally balanced diet extend human life as it does in rodents? Preliminary research suggests it might, so researchers at the School of Medicine are launching a long-term study to find out.

How unhealthy is fat?The consequences of a fatty diet may vary depending on whom you ask. A recent study concluded that reducing fat intake doesn’t necessarily reduce a woman’s risk for certain types of cancer, but WUSM lipid researcher Anne Goldberg contends that only a lengthier study could produce reliable results regarding fat’s effects on cancer risk.

A blood vessel that has become narrowed by build-up from cholesterol and other substancesA pill containing plant substances called sterols can help lower cholesterol, according to researchers at the School of Medicine. The researchers studied patients who already were eating a heart-healthy diet and taking statin drugs to control cholesterol. The addition of plant sterols helped further lower total cholesterol and contributed to a nearly 10 percent reduction in low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the so-called “bad” cholesterol.

Tiles painted by cancer patients and their familiesPatients undergoing treatment at the Siteman Cancer Center have a new option to pass the time. They can get creative and paint ceramic tiles for a display in the treatment area. Arts as Healing, a program facilitated by the School of Medicine’s Medical Photography, Illustration and Computer Graphics (MedPIC) department, is currently working on “Your Square Matters,” which allows patients and their families to paint a 4-inch square ceramic tile.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Risks of MS drug found to be low (week of Mar. 1) • Plant sterols lower cholesterol (week of Mar. 8) • PET scans help test lung drugs (week of Mar. 15) • Arts as Healing program (week of Mar. 22) • Genetic basis of ADHD (week of Mar. 29)

Robert Cohen, Post-DispatchIbrahim Al Hoqail (right), dean of the medical college at King Fahad Medical City, asks a statistics question of instructor Stuart Boxerman.Sweeping changes in the Saudi health care system recently filled a WUSM classroom with a group of medical executives and physicians from King Fahad Medical City, a four-hospital complex based in Riyadh. As health care in Saudi Arabia moves toward privatization, many doctors and health care officials are finding themselves in new, unfamiliar roles. Some have turned to the WUSM health administration program to gain the skills they’ll need to manage their new environment.

In recent years, one in five U.S. Latina teens attempted suicide. Though this rate is startlingly higher than their non-Hispanic peers, “efforts to understand the phenomenon have been hampered by a dearth of solid statistics and research,” says Luis H. Zayas, Ph.D., professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert on mental health issues in the Latino community. “We have developed a new research model that will help us to understand what is really behind those statistics.” More…

A program designed by the Weight Management Center at the School of Medicine and the YMCA of Chesterfield has helped the Garcia family from Chesterfield lose roughly 105 pounds. The Family Lifestyle Intervention Program (FLIP) is designed to show families how to get healthy together through supervised exercise, counseling and education.

mp3 fileThere are two primary sub-types of ADHD. One involves severe inattention. The other form includes both attention problems and hyperactivity. But all of the various subtypes of ADHD have a strong genetic component. mp3 fileAlthough the syndrome is always referred to as ADHD, Todd says several genes may be involved, and those various genetic […]

mp3 fileIn studies of autism and ADHD, it appears genes influence symptoms along a spectrum from very mild symptoms that “normal” people may have to very severe symptoms that highly impaired people will have. In other words, genes seem to determine whether “normal” behaviors can become disease pathologies. mp3 fileSeverely affected autistic people don’t generally […]