Medicine & Health

Two new studies led by the School of Medicine aim to clarify the genetic underpinnings of Alzheimer’s disease. Funded by grants totaling $7 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers seek to find ways to predict who will develop the disease as well as new targets for therapies. 

Washington University School of Medicine researchers have found that socially contagious itching is hardwired in the brain. Studying mice, the scientists identified what happens in the brain when a mouse feels itchy after seeing another scratch.

Cancer prevention experts, led by Washington University School of Medicine’s Graham A. Colditz, MD, PhD, are calling for education efforts and expanded programs to help people improve their health and halt cancer development.

Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, is expanding our understanding of human health into nonhuman realms, studying the bacteria that take up residence in the gut and help define who we become. Indeed, this research suggests you are what you — and your microbes — eat.

Jeff Gordon’s influence in the race to understand the human gut microbiome extends to the many students he has mentored at the Washington University School of Medicine. Here is a small sampling of his former students and postdocs, and where they are now.

At the Gary M. Sumers Recreation Center, the university encourages healthy living through ­ state-of-the-art fitness and recreation facilities.

Marylen Mann is the founder of OASIS a nationwide program to help seniors remain active and engaged in their communities even after retirement.

A new weight-loss therapy offers significantly overweight people a means to rid their bodies of some of what they eat before excess calories can be absorbed. Called aspiration therapy, the FDA-approved, nonsurgical therapy was developed by researchers at the School of Medicine and is available at Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital.

More than 14 million Americans have an irregular heartbeat that predisposes them to sudden death. New research by a biomedical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis seeks to understand the issue at the molecular level with the goal of improving therapies.

Taking popular heartburn medication for prolonged periods may lead to serious kidney damage, even in people who show no signs of kidney problems, according to researchers at the School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System.