Medicine & Health

Doctors at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that less than 1 percent of children who had surgery at St. Louis Children’s Hospital developed an infection at the surgical site within 30 days, they report in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Researchers have identified an important part of the pathway through which stress affects mood and motivation for drugs. The finding may prove useful in humans by providing new potential targets for drugs to treat problems related to stress.  

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are playing a leading role in an international collaboration dedicated to understanding genes that contribute to inflammatory bowel disease.

Like explorers mapping a new planet, scientists probing the brain need every type of landmark they can get. Each mountain, river or forest helps scientists find their way through the intricacies of the human brain. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a new technique that provides rapid access to brain landmarks formerly only available at autopsy.

Nearly 390 physicians at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have been named to The Best Doctors In America for 2011.

To ensure that all students have the best opportunity to learn and thrive, Washington University School of Medicine is again sponsoring its annual school supply drive to benefit Adams Elementary School in the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood.

A traveling exhibition from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum called “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” highlights how physicians, geneticists, anthropologists and others in the healing professions developed and participated in the Holocaust. The exhibit opens Monday, Aug. 8, at the Bernard Becker Medical Library at Washington University School of Medicine and will be on display until Sunday, Oct. 30.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have been awarded a $9.2 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to study the relationship between obesity and cancer. The five-year grant will fund the new Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer Center. Led by Graham A. Colditz, MD, PhD, the Center’s researchers will study the effect of diet, weight, physical activity and the environment on cancer and cancer survivorship.

High-dose vitamin D relieves joint and muscle pain for many breast cancer patients taking estrogen-lowering drugs, according to a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Giving children intravenous fluids early in the course of an E. coli O157:H7 infection appears to lower the odds of developing severe kidney failure, according to Christina Ahn Hickey, MD, and other researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other institutions.