Author: Jim Dryden

A national team of investigators led by psychiatric geneticists at the School of Medicine has identified a gene that appears to be linked to both alcoholism and depression. The study, published in the September issue of the journal Human Molecular Genetics, is the first to identify a specific gene associated with both depression and alcoholism.

He completed both his residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in gastroenterology at the School of Medicine.

The Superintendent’s Fieldbook: A Guide for Leaders of Learning draws on the experiences of 200 superintendents over a 10-year period.

It pairs high-school students and teachers with research mentors from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Saint Louis University and WUSTL.

Becker, Gummer, Hershey, Hoffman, Larson, Matheson, Pienaar, Seaman, Simon.

BarrackRobert L. Barrack, M.D., has been named the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Distinguished Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the School of Medicine. He also will serve as chief of the Adult Reconstructive Surgery Service and chief of staff for orthopaedic surgery at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Liposuction is no substitute for dieting when it comes to preventing diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, the Washington University team found that removing abdominal fat by using modern liposuction techniques did not provide the metabolic benefits normally associated with similar amounts of fat loss induced by dieting.

WUSTL researchers have found no convincing evidence that people can delay or hasten their own deaths through sheer will.Many of us know stories about terminally ill friends or relatives who were able to battle their illnesses in order to survive until a birthday or other important occasion. In much of medicine, it’s an accepted “truth” that people can hang on or give up and somehow influence the timing of their own deaths. But in reviewing every study on the subject of delaying death, Washington University behavioral medicine researchers have found that there’s no evidence to support the idea that terminally ill people can have an effect on when they die.

Areas of red and yellow show increased uptake of the altanserin tracer due to binding to the serotonin receptors.Most of us feel sad from time to time, even very sad, but during a bout of clinical depression, a person is unable to escape their low mood for several weeks at a time. A popular and effective treatment for depression involves a class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Those drugs increase serotonin levels in the brain and help relieve symptoms of depression, and most scientists believe the brain chemical serotonin plays a key role in depression. Now neuroscience researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that in people who are depressed, a key brain structure has an abnormally low number of cellular serotonin receptors.

Neurons that have been infected with West Nile Virus.The cold winter is over, and spring rains and warmer weather mean that mosquito season is coming. Since 1999, summer mosquitoes have meant a risk for West Nile Virus. No one knows what 2004 will bring, but the season seems to have started early. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) already is reporting the presence of the virus in mosquitoes, birds and other animals in nine states. There even is confirmation of a human case in Ohio. Infectious diseases specialists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis remind that the people at greatest risk are those 50 and older and those with weakened immune systems. Younger people also can acquire the infection, but their risk is significantly lower.