Medicine & Health

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is organizing a Missouri-wide Heart Failure Clinical Research Network, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Cardiology Chief Douglas L. Mann, MD, says this clinical research consortium is one of only nine regional centers across the country investigating innovative treatments for heart failure.

Not all viruses make us sick. But which ones are friends and which ones are foes? Researchers, led by Gregory Storch, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a five-year, $3.3 million grant to study children with weakened immune systems to identify the viruses that make children sick.

Registration is now open for the School of Medicine’s Mini-Medical School, now in its 14th year. These eight-week sessions offer the WUSTL community and the public an opportunity to learn about medicine and surgery from the School of Medicine faculty in a classroom environment.

In one way or another, nearly everyone at Washington University School of Medicine has heard of Bernard Becker, MD. Many use the beautiful Bernard Becker Medical Library or consult rare eye books there from the well-known Becker collection. In the Department of Ophthalmology, which Becker chaired for more than 35 years, faculty members know well his landmark research on glaucoma.

Surgeons at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified tiny fractures and other rib abnormalities in patients treated for a circulatory condition called venous thoracic outlet syndrome. The disorder is often seen in elite athletes who rely on their upper extremities.

Lawrence G. Lenke, MD, has been appointed chief of spinal surgery in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He succeeds Keith H. Bridwell, MD, head of the spine service for the past 28 years.

Disease-causing bacteria’s efforts to resist antibiotics may get help from their distant bacterial relatives that live in the soil, new research by Kevin Forsberg, a graduate student at Washington University School of Medicine suggests. The researchers found identical genes for antibiotic resistance in soil bacteria and in pathogens from clinics around the world.

Randall Bateman, MD, had no intention of becoming a doctor when he enrolled as an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis. As a faculty member at the School of Medicine since 2006, Bateman now focuses his research on Alzheimer’s disease.

Many children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can benefit from medication for related disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). “Unfortunately, there is very poor understanding of overall medication use for kids with autism,” says Paul T. Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. As a step toward improving the situation, Shattuck and colleagues studied psychotropic medication use compared across individuals with an ASD, ADHD and both an ASD with ADHD. “Observations from the present study reinforce the complexity of pharmacologic treatment of challenging behavior in kids with ASDs and ADHD. There needs to be a clearer guide for treating kids with both an ASD and ADHD,” he says.

Researchers have found significant differences in brain development in infants as young as six months old who later develop autism, compared to babies who don’t develop the disorder. The new research, which relied on brain scans acquired at night while infants were naturally sleeping, suggests that autism doesn’t appear abruptly, but instead develops over time during infancy.