Medicine & Health

A type of antibiotic that can cause hearing loss in people has been found to paradoxically protect the ears when given in extended low doses in very young mice. The surprise finding came from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who looked to see if loud noise and the antibiotic kanamycin together would produce a bigger hearing loss than either factor by itself.

The largest U.S. epidemiological study of Parkinson’s disease has found that the disease is more prevalent in the Midwest and the Northeast and is twice as likely to strike whites and Hispanics as blacks and Asians. Researchers analyzed data on more than 36 million Medicare recipients.

Washington University School of Medicine and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital announced in a Jan. 25 news conference in Washington, D.C., an unprecedented effort to identify the genetic changes that give rise to some of the world’s deadliest childhood cancers.

HIV infection or the treatments used to control it are prematurely aging the brain, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of California-San Diego have found. Blood flow in the brains of HIV patients is reduced to levels normally seen in uninfected patients 15 to 20 years older.

The Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center and Washington University have received from Alvin J. Siteman a commitment for an endowment that will provide at least $1 million annually to advance pioneering investigations into cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment. The new endowment establishes the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Research Fund, which will provide support for transformational scientific contributions that address the challenges associated with overcoming cancer. 

Cognitive fluctuations, or episodes when train of thought temporarily is lost, are more likely to occur in older persons who are developing Alzheimer’s disease than in their healthy peers, according to scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Older patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) might benefit from a drug that reactivates genes that cancer cells turn off, according to research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and collaborating institutions. The researchers say the findings support further investigation of the drug, decitabine, as a first-line treatment for these patients, who have limited treatment options.

David Windus has been named associate dean for medical student education at the School of Medicine. He also is a professor of medicine and assistant medical director of the school’s Chromalloy American Kidney Center.

Obesity researchers at the School of Medicine are recruiting families with overweight children for a study to help those kids, and their parents, lose weight. The two-year study, called COMPASS (Comprehensive Maintenance Program to Achieve Sustained Success), will involve families with one or more children between the ages of 7 and 11 who are at least 20 percent above their ideal weight.

It may seem a small consolation from either point of view, but a new study has affirmed that patients with cancer are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, and patients with Alzheimer’s disease are less likely to get cancer.