Medicine & Health

COVID-19 has touched seemingly every aspect of life, and that includes laboratory work on the Medical and Danforth campuses. Most labs have responded by taking steps to temporarily shut down bench work and take that work online, while others have shifted their focus to the coronavirus.

COVID-19 survivors are needed to donate blood plasma. Infectious diseases physicians at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed an expanded access program to give blood plasma from COVID-19 survivors to critically ill patients.

Washington University School of Medicine is launching a clinical trial for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. The study will investigate whether two different antimalarial drugs, including hydroxychloroquine, alone or in combination with a common antibiotic is effective in treating COVID-19 patients.

As the novel coronavirus has accelerated its spread throughout the Midwest and across the U.S., scores of students on the Washington University Medical Campus have mobilized to support health-care workers and the St. Louis community in the fight against the global pandemic.

It’s important to feel connected to our community and to practice self-care during this uncertain time. That’s why Washington University’s human resources team moved quickly to adapt programming and migrate many of its offerings to an online format.

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis studied the gut microbiomes of wild apes in the Republic of Congo, of captive apes in zoos in the U.S., and of people from around the world and discovered that lifestyle is more important than geography or even species in determining the makeup of the gut microbiome.

As the coronavirus continues to spread across the nation, a number of false conclusions and rumors have spread with it. Three epidemiologists in public health at Washington University in St. Louis separate the truth from myth.

Many countries reacted slowly and inadequately to the spread of COVID-19. Some critics have said this is due to initial reports of the disease, which indicated that it mainly affected older populations. “Older adults are not some kind of expendable commodity,” said Nancy Morrow-Howell, the Betty Bofinger Brown Distinguished Professor of Social Policy at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and an international leader in gerontology.

Lack of sleep could help promote the development of Alzheimer’s disease, according to two studies from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The studies could help identify people at high risk of developing Alzheimer’s dementia and point to strategies for prevention.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and elsewhere are investigating whether transfusions of blood plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 can prevent or treat the disease. The approach was used with some success during the 1918 influenza pandemic.