Medicine & Health

A protein that helps build the brain in infants and children may aid efforts to restore damage from multiple sclerosis (MS) and other neurodegenerative diseases, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found.

When she was a child “in the land Down Under,” Camilla Whittington’s dad decided it would be fun for them to go look for platypuses. These animals, found only in Australia, are technically mammals, yet they are like no other mammals around – sure, like all mammals, they produce milk for their babies, but they also lay eggs and have a bill like birds do, and, most oddly, the males shoot venom from spurs in their hind legs that causes pain even the strongest painkillers can’t alleviate.  

The bone-strengthening drug zoledronic acid (Zometa) can help fight metastatic breast cancer when given before surgery, suggests research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. When the drug was given along with chemotherapy for three months before breast cancer surgery, it reduced the number of women who had tumor cells in their bone marrow at the time of surgery.

Only about one in three young women has received the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to help prevent cervical cancer, according to a new report from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The HPV vaccine prevents four strains of the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, two of which are found in about 70 percent of all women with cervical cancer. But the new data shows only 34 percent of girls ages 13 to 17 were being vaccinated in six states that were surveyed. 

Benjamin S. Carson Sr., MD, director of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery, professor of neurosurgery, of oncology, of plastic surgery and of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, spoke to School of Medicine graduates about “The World’s Most Valuable Possession” May 21 at the Ferrara Theatre at America’s Center.

Washington University School of Medicine is launching a Master of Population Health Sciences degree beginning this fall.

Doctors at the School of Medicine have diagnosed a rare parasitic infection in six people who had consumed raw crayfish from streams and rivers in Missouri.

As part of the Human Microbiome Project (HMP), scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and their colleagues have decoded the genomes of 178 microbes from the human body, they report in the journal Science.

A nationwide study has confirmed the benefit of giving estrogen-lowering drugs before surgery to breast cancer patients. The treatment increased the likelihood that women could undergo breast-conservation surgery, also called lumpectomy, instead of mastectomy.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a parasite protein that has all the makings of a microbial glass jaw: it’s essential, it’s vulnerable and humans have nothing like it, meaning scientists can take pharmacological swings at it with minimal fear of collateral damage.