Medicine & Health

Larry J. Shapiro, MD, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, will host the annual Dean’s Update for all employees Nov. 8 and 22.

A team of Washington University in St. Louis engineers and physicians is combining areas of expertise to prevent hospitalized patients from deteriorating while in the hospital and from being readmitted soon after discharge.

Roberto Civitelli, MD, the Sydney M. and Stella H. Schoenberg Professor of Medicine, has been elected president of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR), the world’s leading scientific organization for bone health research.

Utility work for the Campus Renewal Project on the Medical Campus will require the temporary closure of Parkview Place Friday, Nov. 1, starting at 11 a.m. The work is expected to continue for eight to 10 hours.

Studying spinal fluid from people at risk for Alzheimer’s disease, School of Medicine researchers have found that a gene variation that had not been considered risky actually can increase the chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease when it occurs in tandem with another gene variant known to elevate risk. Shown is an image of a brain with a buildup of amyloid deposits (highest amounts in yellow and red) that collect to form senile plaques in patients with Alzheimer’s.

​​Anthony Odibo, MD, specializes in identifying and treating high-risk pregnancies using ultrasound and genetic testing. In his research, he evaluates the effectiveness of fetal surgeries and diagnostic techniques before birth.​

The School of Medicine’s Evan D. Kharasch, MD, PhD (left) and J. Evan Sadler, MD, PhD, have been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors medical scientists in the United States can receive.

Premature babies often spend their first months of life in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) — environments that, in recent years, have seen transformations, with hospitals adding private rooms to NICUs in place of open wards. But research at the School of Medicine adds new information to the discussion over what is the optimal setting for infants in the NICU. Shown is the study’s first author, Bobbi Pineda, PhD, in the NICU at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

Timothy J. Eberlein, MD, the William K. Bixby Professor of Surgery and chairman of the Department of Surgery at the School of Medicine, was inducted last month as an honorary fellow into the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, one of the world’s oldest organizations dedicated to advances in surgery.

Scientists at the School of Medicine have identified a biological marker that may help predict overall survival of people with deadly brain tumors. The marker is made by noncancerous cells known as monocytes (pictured in brown).