Author: Chris Amelung

Forget your keys recently, can’t remember where you put your reading glasses and feeling a little blue? It could be that you’re not getting enough vitamin D. Researchers at the School of Medicine studying the effects of vitamin D deficiency on the elderly have found a correlation of mild depression and forgetfulness with low levels of vitamin D.

School of Medicine clinical faculty and staff recently collected more than 1,500 medical textbooks to be donated to the Lui Hospital in Sudan, located in the war zone of southern Sudan. The staff who work there rely on outdated medical references, some dating back to the 1930s.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are studying military-like techniques to detect and destroy deadly pathogens, including cancerous tumors. Nanoparticles, invisible to the human eye, operate much like a laser-guided missile within the body. They are able to locate and even deliver medication directly to diseased areas with great accuracy in the laboratory. The researchers will soon begin testing the nanoparticles in human clinical trials.

Photo by Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-DispatchKathy and Natalie Ferrara prepare dinner. The Ferraras will be interviewed Friday by StoryCorps about Kathy surviving colon cancer.Three years ago, Kathy Ferrara was faced with the heartbreaking task of telling her children she had cancer. She carefully planned her message. Next week, Ferrara and her daughter Natalie will sit in a quiet room at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and talk in-depth about when mom found out she had Stage 2 colon cancer and cellular tests revealed a high risk for recurrence. The conversation will be recorded by StoryCorps, a nonprofit organization in Brooklyn that’s constructing one of the largest oral history projects of its kind.

A memorial service for Abdullah M. Nassief, M.D., associate professor of neurology, will be held at 1 p.m. May 9 in Connor Auditorium in the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center at the School of Medicine. Friends, colleagues, patients and former students are all invited to remember his extraordinary life.

The Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging is hosting the 2009 Friedman Conference April 21 at the Eric P. Newman Education Center from 8:30 a.m.-1 p.m. The conference, titled “In the Words of the Artist: The Influence of Age on Creativity and Expression,” focuses on the ways artists experience the aging process and how it affects creativity and expression.

To stand, walk, run or ride a bike, people rely greatly on the sensory apparatus of the vestibular system located in the inner ears. Two million people in the United States live with chronic imbalance as the result of vestibular system malfunction. Joel Goebel, M.D., director of the Dizziness and Balance Center at the School of Medicine, wanted to help people with vestibular malfunction better navigate through their surroundings. So he collaborated on building a device, worn on the head, that alerts wearers that they are leaning so they can upright themselves.

A March 30th symposium will commemorate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth by bringing together four leading geneticists whose research focuses on defining the DNA changes that distinguish humans from our closest evolutionary relatives, the non-human primates.

Last year, Chuck Rickert, a fifth-year student in the M.D./Ph.D. program at the School of Medicine, heard a show about kidney donation on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation.” One of the callers, a man in his 50s on dialysis, said his blood type did not match any friends or family, and his only option for a new kidney was to wait for something bad to happen to a younger person. The distressed man’s call stuck with Rickert, who eventually decided to anonymously donate one of his own kidneys.

Brain cells long lumped into the same category have hidden differences that may contribute to the formation of tumors, according to a new study from researchers at the School of Medicine. Scientists showed that brain cells known as astrocytes make use of different genes depending on what region of the mouse brain they came from. These differences are too subtle to overtly mark them as distinct cell types, but substantial enough to make it easier for the cells to multiply more in response to genetic changes that increase cancer risk.