Medicine & Health

As a survivor of sex trafficking, Katie Rhoades, MSW ’11, is passionate about helping women in the commercial sex industry. After graduating from the Brown School, she founded Healing Action, a nonprofit that helps women move on from their trauma.

New research indicates that more than 90 percent of the newest and most widely prescribed drugs on the market needed National Institute of Health (NIH) funding early in their development. The researchers believe proposed cuts to the NIH budget could cripple future development of new, life-saving drugs.

Ten million people come to the ER with chest pain each year in the United States. A new School of Medicine study shows that these patients are getting more testing than is necessary to rule out heart attacks and that such patients do not need CT scans or cardiac stress tests, according to the researchers.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are studying nitrous oxide as a possible treatment for patients who are hospitalized due to suicidal thoughts.

Human cells have a way of detecting and mending DNA damage caused by some common chemotherapy drugs, according to a new study from the School of Medicine. The findings could have important implications for treating cancer.

John F. DiPersio, MD, PhD, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a $6 million outstanding investigator award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support research aimed at improving therapies for leukemia.

A defective gene linked to autism influences how neurons connect and communicate with each other in the brain, according to a study from the School of Medicine. Rodents that lack the gene form too many connections between brain neurons and have difficulty learning.

A new study at the School of Medicine suggests that being penny wise and pound foolish is not so much a failure of judgment as it is a function of how our brains tally the value of objects that vary widely in worth.

School of Medicine researchers have identified a pathway in the brain that seems to connect exposure to adverse experiences during early childhood with depression and problems with physical health in teens and preteens.

Researchers at the School of Medicine have identified how the malaria parasite gets into and out of red blood cells, and chemical compounds that block the process. The findings could lead to desperately needed new drugs for the deadly mosquito-borne disease.