Author: Jim Dryden

Poor housing conditions contribute to the risk for diabetes in urban, middle-aged African-Americans, researchers have discovered.

The list of reasons you shouldn’t smoke has gotten longer. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis 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.

School of Medicine researchers found that in some cases, one spouse’s excesses with alcohol could protect the other from alcohol dependence.

Using an innovative statistical approach, a research team from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of California, Los Angeles, has identified two regions of DNA linked to autism. They found the suspicious DNA with a much smaller sample of people than has been used traditionally in searches for autism genes.

Metabolic syndrome among the HIV-infected population is about 26 percent, the same as in those not infected with the virus, a new study shows.

Researchers have found a significant increase in the risk for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children with certain genes whose mothers smoked during pregnancy.

School of Medicine researchers plan to use MRI scans to help predict siblings’ risk of developing mental disorders such as schizophrenia.

New HIV therapies have contributed to a decrease in AIDS deaths, but physicians suspected the more potent medications led to symptoms characteristic of metabolic syndrome. However, now researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that the rate of metabolic syndrome in HIV-infected patients is virtually identical to that in uninfected people. Furthermore, the type or duration of HIV therapy did not affect the rate of metabolic syndrome.

Smoking while pregnant combined with genetic factors greatly increases the risk of severe ADHD.Past research has suggested that both genes and prenatal insults — such as exposure to alcohol and nicotine — can increase the risk of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). But the identified increases in risk have been very modest. Now, a team of Washington University scientists has found that when those factors are studied together, risk of a severe type of ADHD greatly increases.

School of Medicine researchers are evaluating dietary supplements to determine if they can prevent damage from age-related macular degeneration.