Medicine & Health

The employee 2011-12 U-Pass — allowing WUSTL faculty and staff free use of Metro, the region’s public transportation system — will expire June 30. Benefits-eligible employees may request a new U-Pass for the 2012-13 fiscal year at the Parking & Transportation Services website, parking.wustl.edu/upass.htm. The new pass will be valid through June 30, 2013.

Family members of children with a staph infection often harbor a drug-resistant form of the germ, although they don’t show symptoms, a team of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found.

Drugs for type 2 diabetes can contribute to unwanted side effects, but Washington University researchers have found that in mice, an investigational drug appears to improve insulin sensitivity without side effects. The medicine works through a different pathway, which could provide additional targets for treating insulin resistance and diabetes.

A new study suggests that health insurance exchanges, a key provision of the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, may need to be monitored by policymakers to make sure there is sufficient competition between private insurance plans. In the study, published in Health Affairs, Timothy McBride, PhD, professor and associate dean for public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, examined the insurance premiums, availability of plans and enrollment levels under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). “From its inception, the health reform legislation used the structure of the FEHBP to guide the design of these exchanges,” McBride says.

A new model for understanding how nerve cells in the brain control movement may help unlock the secrets of the motor cortex, a critical region that has long resisted scientists’ efforts to understand it, researchers report June 3 in Nature.

​With more than $5 million in new grants from Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Washington University scientists at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center are developing innovative treatments in the fight against breast cancer.

A new study shows the same gene variations that make it difficult to stop smoking also increase the likelihood that heavy smokers will respond to nicotine-replacement therapy and drugs that thwart cravings. The finding suggests it may one day be possible to predict which patients are most likely to benefit from drug treatments for nicotine addiction.

Ralph G. Dacey Jr., MD, the Henry G. and Edith R. Schwartz Professor and head of the Department of Neurosurgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, became president of the Society of Neurological Surgeons (SNS) May 22, 2012.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital–Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project has announced the largest release to date of comprehensive human cancer genome data for free access by the global scientific community.

Pediatric ophthalmologist R. Lawrence Tychsen, MD, has been named the John F. Hardesty, MD, Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.