Medicine & Health

​A personalized method for testing the effectiveness of drugs that treat multiple myeloma may predict quickly and more accurately the best treatments for individual patients with the bone marrow cancer. The process, developed by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine​ in St. Louis, also may aid patients with leukemia or lymphoma.

In trauma patients experiencing severe bleeding, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will evaluate a drug already approved to minimize blood loss in people suffering from hemophilia — a genetic clotting disorder — or heavy menstrual periods.

In children whose colds tend to progress and lead to severe wheezing and difficulty breathing — such that they are given oral corticosteroids as rescue therapy — researchers have shown that giving a common antibiotic at the first sign of symptoms can reduce the risk of the episode developing into a severe lower respiratory tract illness.

Scientists have shown how a parasitic worm infection common in the developing world increases susceptibility to tuberculosis. The study demonstrated that treating the parasite reduces lung damage seen in mice that also are infected with tuberculosis, thereby eliminating the vulnerability to tuberculosis (TB) that the parasite is known to cause.

Gary A. Silverman, MD, PhD, has been named the Harriet B. Spoehrer Professor and head of the Department of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. With the new appointment, effective in April, Silverman will become pediatrician-in-chief at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and executive director of the Children’s Discovery Institute, a partnership of the school and hospital.

Washington University in St. Louis has received a two-year, $1.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Wolfgang Munar, MD, associate director for Global Social Policy at the Brown School’s Social System Design Lab and associate director of the Institute for Public Health’s Global Health Center, is the project’s primary investigator. The grant money will be used to test a novel methodology that will measure the social structures that enhance or limit adoption of modern contraceptives in rural Ethiopia.

Scientists have identified two chemical scents in the urine of female mice that arouse sexual behavior in males, a discovery that shines a spotlight on how mouse pheromones control behavior.

Building on wireless technology that has the potential to interfere with pain, scientists have developed flexible, implantable devices that can activate — and, in theory, block — pain signals in the body and spinal cord before those signals reach the brain.

​A team of engineers, led by Washington University’s Lihong Wang and postdoctoral researcher Junjie Yao, found that by genetically modifying glioblastoma cancer cells to express BphP1 protein, derived from a bacterium commonly found in soil and water, they could clearly see tiny amounts of live cancer cells as deep as 1 centimeter in tissue using photoacoustic tomography.

Salmon and other freshwater fish and amphibians supercharge their ability to see red and infrared light. Scientists at the School of Medicine have shown that this evolutionary adaptation hinges on the activity of an enzyme that converts vitamin A1 to vitamin A2, enabling the aquatic creatures to more easily navigate murky waters.