Medicine & Health

As China’s government seeks solutions to social problems related to an evolving society, professional social work is increasingly entering new areas, including migrant and aging services, and is poised to take on a larger role in assisting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, say two experts from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

There have been more than 3.5 million requests for assistance to 2-1-1 help lines around the United States since the coronavirus pandemic hit this spring. The impact was immediate and dramatic, said a Brown School researcher who tracks calls to 2-1-1 help lines across the U.S.

New research from Washington University School of Medicine suggests that the immune systems of seriously ill COVID-19 patients can’t do enough to protect them from the virus. The researchers propose that boosting the activity of immune cells may be a good treatment strategy for COVID-19.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have shown that levels of a specific protein in the blood rise as amyloid plaques form in the brain. The discovery could pave the way toward a blood-based test to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms appear.

Research from a multidisciplinary team led by Washington University in St. Louis may provide new insights into wound healing, fibrosis and cancer metastasis.

A new School of Medicine study has shown that specific bacteria living in the upper small intestines of malnourished children play a causal role in stunted growth and other damaging side effects of malnutrition. The knowledge could lead to better therapies.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have combined two types of immunotherapy into a single treatment that may be more effective and possibly safer than current immunotherapies for blood cancers.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and the Saint Louis University Center for Vaccine Development have joined the effort to find a COVID-19 vaccine that can prevent the illness. Researchers at the universities expect to enroll about 3,000 participants in several COVID-19 vaccine trials.

To help efforts to find drugs and vaccines for COVID-19, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine developed a hybrid virus that will enable more scientists to enter the fight against the pandemic. The researchers genetically modified a mild virus.

A new study from Washington University School of Medicine has found that mice infected with Chikungunya virus get less sick and are less likely to transmit the virus to mosquitoes if they have healthy gut microbiomes.