Medicine & Health

The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) will close the ramp from westbound Interstate 64/Highway 40 to Boyle Avenue in St. Louis at 9 a.m. Monday, April 7. The ramp is expected to reopen by mid-May. 

Mario Castro, MD, has been named the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the School of Medicine. He is a noted authority on asthma and other respiratory diseases.

Severely restricting dietary phosphate early in the course of chronic kidney disease can prevent related heart and vascular problems, a new study in rats indicates. Phosphate, an essential mineral, is found in colas, milk, cheese and other dairy products, beans and high-protein foods, and often is added as a preservative in processed foods.

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.

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.

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.

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.