Medicine & Health

In the wake of national protests following the death of George Floyd, some activists are calling on cities to defund their police departments. But what does that mean exactly? Robert Motley, a PhD candidate in the Brown School and manager of the Race & Opportunity Lab at Washington University in St. Louis, explained it’s more of a reallocation of funds for public safety and health.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine have developed a way to guide human stem cells into becoming important precursor cells that give rise to the placenta. These stem cells could help scientists understand miscarriage or preeclampsia.

More than 100 School of Medicine students have been volunteering to help local health departments perform case investigations and contact tracing, essential public health strategies to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a $3.7 million grant to investigate the link between manganese and cognitive problems by studying welders whose work exposes them to the metal.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have found that genes that confer the power to destroy tetracyclines are widespread in bacteria that live in the soil and on people.

A $1.5 million grant to the Brown School will provide state-of-the-art training for 18 early-career researchers in Uganda to strengthen the capacity of research institutions in the country to address HIV/AIDS and its burden on child and adolescent mental health.

Washington University scientists will receive $13.7 million in additional funding for ongoing research into adolescent brain development. Their work is part of the largest long-term study of brain development ever conducted in the United States.

The childhood obesity rate in the United States may increase by 2.4% if school closures continue into December, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Blood tests for antibodies against the COVID-19 virus are becoming more available, but no test is perfectly reliable, so results must be carefully interpreted, Washington University School of Medicine experts say.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have received two grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) totaling more than $5 million to study two types of parasitic worm infection that cause devastating illness in millions of people worldwide.