Medicine & Health

Tobacco control experts at Washington University in St. Louis would welcome a crackdown on e-cigarette commercials on television and radio. But advertising restrictions, as recently suggested by a member of the Federal Communications Commission, are just one way to curb the vaping epidemic among America’s youth, said Doug Luke, professor at the Brown School and director of the Center for Public Health Systems Science.

With the help of a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development, an international team that includes scientists from the School of Medicine is poised to improve cancer care in Guatemala with new state-of-the-art radiation therapy equipment.

The Brown School has partnered with Preferred Family Healthcare in St. Louis to launch the Community Academic Partnership on Addiction (CAPA), a teaching, learning and research clinic aimed at addressing substance use disorder. The Brown School’s David Patterson Silver Wolf serves as CAPA’s chief research officer.

U.S. communities with higher smoking rates or lower excise taxes were less likely to adopt retail policies restricting tobacco sales, according to new research from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

A new School of Medicine study finds that formula and breast milk encourage the growth of similar kinds of bacteria in babies’ digestive tracts, but the bacteria work differently. The health implications are unclear.

A new study in mice from the School of Medicine shows that viruses that target the nervous system can kill neurons in the gut that coordinate the process of moving waste along. Such viruses may be involved in causing people’s digestive woes.

Doctors recommend against taking antibiotics for viral infections because they don’t kill viruses — and they promote antibiotic resistance. A new study from the School of Medicine suggests another reason to avoid the pills: Taking antibiotics increases susceptibility to subsequent viral infection, at least in mice.

A small clinical trial led by Richard S. Hotchkiss, MD, at the School of Medicine, shows that a drug that revs up the immune system holds promise in treating sepsis. The approach goes against the grain of earlier strategies that have relied on antibiotics and inflammatory medications to tamp down the immune system.

Washington University School of Medicine’s Stephen Beverley found that viruses hidden inside the parasite Leishmania worsen disease caused by the parasite. Now, an evolutionary survey of the viruses in related parasites suggests that Leishmania’s viruses may have helped it make the jump from infecting insects to infecting vertebrates.