Author: Leslie Gibson McCarthy

Probiotics – living bacteria taken to promote digestive health – evolve once inside the body and have the potential to become less effective and sometimes even harmful, according to a new study from the School of Medicine. The findings suggest that developers of probiotic-based therapeutics must consider how the probiotics might change after administration.

Mitochondria manufacture energy in every cell of the body, including heart muscle cells. A new study from the School of Medicine shows that cardiac mitochondria are abnormal in the offspring of mouse mothers that become obese due to a high-fat, high sugar diet. Those offspring then pass on the mitochondrial defects at least two more generations.

With a growing demand for mental health services at colleges, a research team led by the School of Medicine has received a $3.8 million grant to test a mental health phone app to treat depression, anxiety and eating disorders in a study involving some 8,000 students at 20 colleges, universities and community colleges.

Pain researchers at the School of Medicine have shown in rodents that they can block receptors on brain cells that are responsible for the negative emotions associated with pain, such as sadness, depression and lethargy. The findings could lead to new, less addictive approaches to pain treatment.

Researchers at the School of Medicine have found a compound that may treat inflammatory bowel disease without directly targeting inflammation. The compound tamps down the activity of a gene linked to blood clotting.

When very young children talk about wanting to commit suicide, conventional wisdom is that they don’t understand what they’re saying. But School of Medicine research has found that depressed children ages 4 to 6 who think and talk about committing suicide understand what it means to die better than other kids of the same age. They also are more likely to think of death as something caused by violence.

With the aid of a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health, School of Medicine researchers are studying why immunity elicited by the flu vaccine wanes so rapidly. The goal is a better, longer-lasting flu vaccine.

The fifth annual Day of Discovery, Dialogue & Action event featured talks, workshops and panel discussions designed to spark questions and conversations on both the Danforth and Medical Campuses, as well as provide a tool kit for purposeful discussion moving forward.

Over-testing for urinary tract infections (UTIs) leads to unnecessary antibiotic use, which spreads antibiotic resistance. Infectious disease specialists at the School of Medicine made changes to hospital procedures that cut urine tests by nearly half without compromising doctors’ abilities to detect UTIs.

The School of Medicine has received a $15 million commitment from longtime benefactors Philip and Sima Needleman to support two cutting-edge research centers aimed at developing new treatments for diseases that collectively affect millions.