Medicine & Health

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.

Samuel Achilefu, PhD, of the School of Medicine has won the St. Louis Award for 2014 for his work in creating cancer-visualizing glasses, which were used in surgeries for first time last year. He is the 87th person honored with the annual award since it was established in 1931.

It’s normal for a young child to have tantrums and be otherwise disruptive, but researchers have found that if such behavior is prolonged or especially intense, the child may have conduct disorder, a childhood psychiatric problem that could be a harbinger of antisocial behavior. The research was led by Joan L. Luby, MD (shown).

Depression and behavioral changes may occur before memory declines in people who will go on to develop Alzheimer’s disease, according to new research at the School of Medicine led by senior author Catherine M. Roe, PhD.

More than 100 cancer patients have received an innovative form of radiation therapy at the S. Lee Kling Center for Proton Therapy in the center’s first year of operation. The treatments are provided at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Antibiotics aren’t supposed to be effective against viruses, but new evidence in mice suggests they may help fight norovirus, a highly contagious virus that causes severe gastrointestinal illness, scientists at the School of Medicine report.

It was big news this week when Nature published the discovery of a new antibiotic, teixobactin. Teixobactin, which kills bacteria by a different pathway than other antibiotics, represented the first new class of antibiotics to be discovered in 30 years. But, says, Michael S. Kinch of Washington University in St. Louis, the drug itself may be less important than the way it was found.