Medicine & Health

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.

Washington University School of Medicine is one of more than 30 genome sequencing hubs worldwide participating in a study to sequence the DNA of young, healthy adults and children who develop severe COVID-19 despite having no underlying medical problems.

Trish Kohl and Lora Iannotti, associate professors at Washington University’s Brown School, have received a five-year $3.2 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health to study stunted growth and development in children in Haiti.

Researchers at the School of Medicine are helming a global study of an estimated 30,000 health-care workers to establish whether the antimalaria drug chloroquine might prevent or reduce the severity of COVID-19 infections in such workers.

Spanish-speaking students and faculty at the School of Medicine have collaborated with community leaders to create and disseminate information in Spanish about the novel coronavirus for the St. Louis region’s Latino population.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine found that gene therapy in mice helped build strength and significant muscle mass quickly, while reducing the severity of osteoarthritis. The gene therapy also prevented obesity, even when the mice were fed a high-fat diet.

A study led by the School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis has found that stroke evaluations fell by nearly 40% during a period of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that many stroke patients are not seeking potentially life-saving medical treatment.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that flies sleep more when they can’t fly, possibly because sleeping helps them adapt to a challenging new situation.

An in-home monitoring program for COVID-19 patients who are not sick enough to be hospitalized has been launched by the School of Medicine and BJC HealthCare. By keeping close watch over COVID patients, doctors hope to identify signs of deterioration early so that they can intervene and, ideally, keep more people out of the hospital.

Disabling a gene in specific mouse cells, School of Medicine researchers have prevented mice from becoming obese, even after the animals had been fed a high-fat diet. The researchers blocked the activity of a gene in immune cells called macrophages, key inflammatory cells.