Medicine & Health

People who smoke also tend to eat more high-fat foods. So do obese people. Now, a team of researchers, including M. Yanina Pepino, PhD, at the School of Medicine, has found that obese women who also smoke have a difficult time perceiving fat and sweetness in their food. And that could lead them to eat even more fatty foods.

New research at the School of Medicine and Vanderbilt University Medical Center has implicated a poorly understood protein called PLAC8 in the spread of colon cancer.

Take a virtual tour of Washington University Medical Center’s future, when all phases of construction will be complete. The Medical Campus is being transformed by renovations and new construction as part of the Campus Renewal Project.

The School of Medicine’s 2014 commencement speaker will be Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, a senior fellow and director of the Initiative on Value and Innovation in Health Care at the Brookings Institution. Several other commencement speakers also have been announced.

Each year, Allyson Zazulia, MD, associate professor of neurology and radiology, hosts a review modeled after the game show ‘Jeopardy.’ The session helps medical students prepare for an exam on diseases of the nervous system. Shown, from left, are students Tracey Godbold and Sravya Vajapeyajula participating in the game.

Although tobacco companies are barred by law from advertising their products to children, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have found that many teens and pre-teens are getting tobacco advertisements and promotions through social media outlets or text messaging on mobile phones. More than one in 10 children under 18 reported receiving tobacco coupons or promotions on their Facebook or MySpace pages or in text messages.

IDEA Labs will host its second annual Demo Day April 18. Medical and engineering students from the Medical and Danforth campuses will demonstrate prototypes for inventions they created to solve a variety of health-care problems.

Chris Carpenter, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine, co-chaired the national Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines Task Force, which created new recommendations intended to improve the care for older adults in emergency departments.

The Journal of Biological Chemistry has recognized School of Medicine researcher Ron Bose, MD, PhD, and his colleagues for work describing the combined structure of two proteins that, when bound together, drive growth of many breast cancers.

Fourth-year medical students learned Friday, March 21, where they will go for residency training, the next stage of their careers. The annual event also brought a marriage proposal for one student, to the delight of students gathered for Match Day. Shown is student Jacqueline Chen upon learning she will go to Barnes-Jewish Hospital to focus on internal medicine for her residency.