Medicine & Health

Shin-ichiro Imai, MD, PhD, is a professor of developmental biology and of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Over the past three decades, his research has shed light on the processes of aging and longevity as he has sought to help people maintain better health into later years.

A mosquito-borne virus that has spread to the Caribbean and Central and South America and has caused isolated infections in Florida often causes joint pain and swelling similar to that seen in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, according to new research from the School of Medicine.

Women whose bodies have high levels of chemicals found in plastics, personal-care products, common household items and the environment experience menopause two to four years earlier than women with lower levels of these chemicals, according to a new study.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved for testing in people a nanoparticle-based imaging agent jointly developed at the School of Medicine and collaborating institutions. The imaging agent may illuminate dangerous plaque in arteries, and doctors hope to use it to identify patients at high risk of stroke.

Inflammatory bowel diseases are associated with a decrease in the diversity of bacteria in the gut, but a new study led by researchers at the School of Medicine has linked these same illnesses to an increase in the diversity of viruses.

A new tool kit for dissemination and implementation, developed by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute in Washington, D.C., prominently features the work of several university faculty members, including the groundbreaking 2012 book, “Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health: Translating Science to Practice.”

Analyzing every marijuana-related Twitter message sent during a one-month period in early 2014, researchers at the School of Medicine have found that the “Twitterverse” is a pot-friendly place. In that time, more than 7 million tweets referenced marijuana, with 15 times as many pro-pot tweets sent as anti-pot tweets.

Herbert W. Virgin IV, MD, PhD, the Edward Mallinckrodt Professor of Pathology and Immunology and head of the Department of Pathology and Immunology, has received several multiyear grants.

Using Washington University’s state-of-the-art zebrafish facility, scientists have identified a gene that helps regulate how well nerves of the central nervous system are insulated. The finding may have implications for human diseases such as multiple sclerosis, in which this insulation is lost.

Scientists, led in part by Washington University’s Vitaly Klyachko, PhD, have gained new insight into fragile X syndrome — the most common cause of inherited intellectual disability — by studying the case of a person without the disorder, but with two of its classic symptoms.