Medicine & Health

Bacteria that cause urinary tract infections make more tools for stealing from their host than friendly versions of the same bacteria found in the gut.

People have long prized silver as a precious metal. Now, silver-coated endotracheal tubes are giving critically ill patients another reason to value the lustrous metal. In a study published in the Aug. 20, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at the School of Medicine and the NASCENT Investigation Group, report that the silver-coated tubes led to a 36 percent reduction of ventilator-associated pneumonia.

Scanning electron microscopy image of a filamentous bacterium from a patient with a UTIScientists at the School of Medicine have found definitive proof that some of the bacteria that plague women with urinary tract infections (UTIs) are entrenched inside human bladder cells. The finding confirms a controversial revision of scientists’ model of how bacteria cause UTIs. Previously, most researchers assumed that the bacteria responsible for infections get into the bladder but do not invade the individual cells that line the interior of the bladder.

With today’s rapid rate of medical advancement, it’s hard to imagine that an over-the-counter drug introduced in the 1800s could still be widely popular and effective. But due to its low cost and versatility, millions of Americans still keep a bottle of aspirin in their medicine cabinets.

Yellowing of the eye’s lens due to age-related nuclear sclerotic cataractResearchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis may be a step closer to understanding what causes cataracts, with the hope of one day being able to prevent them. In a new study published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology, the researchers report oxygen may be the culprit.

On their backs is the safest way for babies to sleep. Babies who never sleep on their stomachs don’t learn behaviors that may lessen their risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), researchers at the School of Medicine have found. Even so, the researchers caution that infants should always be placed on their backs to sleep.

A controversial theory about how diabetes causes extensive tissue damage will appear in the November issue of Diabetes. At stake in the heated debate over the theory are researchers’ efforts to find new ways to reduce loss of vision, kidney failure, heart damage and other side effects of diabetes.