Medicine & Health

The School of Medicine will be one of seven institutions creating a new national network for sharing information between scientists. A $12.2 million grant from National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) will establish the network, which has been described as “Facebook for scientists.”

Holidays and tables full of delicious food usually go hand in hand, but for nearly half of the children in the United States, this is not guaranteed. “49 percent of all U.S. children will be in a household that uses food stamps at some point during their childhood,” says Mark R. Rank, Ph.D., poverty expert at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. “Food stamp use is a clear sign of poverty and food insecurity, two of the most detrimental economic conditions affecting a child’s health.” Rank’s study, “Estimating the Risk of Food Stamp Use and Impoverishment During Childhood,” is published in the current issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Video available.

Researchers at the School of Medicine have linked mutations in a gene to a benign pediatric brain tumor, a finding that will help scientists seek drug treatments that block growth of the tumors, they report in the journal Neurology.

Intensive lifestyle changes aimed at modest weight loss reduced the rate of developing type 2 diabetes by 34 percent over 10 years in people at high risk for the disease, researchers at the School of Medcine report online in The Lancet.

Bernard Becker, who headed the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences for more than 30 years, received the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s highest honor.

MeyersBryan F. Meyers has been named the Patrick and Joy Williamson Endowed Chair in Cardiothoracic Surgery at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and the School of Medicine.

Results from comprehensive assessments of diabetes’ effects on cell metabolism may aid efforts to reduce diabetic damage to nerves, blood vessels and other tissues, according to researchers at the School of Medicine and elsewhere.

A team of surgeons and oncologists at the Siteman Cancer Center at the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital is aggressively tackling pancreatic cancer — one of the deadliest forms of cancer — and conducting clinical trials of innovative treatment regimens.

CarneyDepression is common in patients with heart disease but antidepressants often aren’t effective in these patients. In a new approach, scientists at the School of Medicine gave patients antidepressants plus omega-3 fatty acids, which are known both for their heart benefits and for alleviating depression in some people. However, the combination therapy was no better than antidepressants alone, they report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

With health care legislation now up for debate in both the House and the Senate, comprehensive health care reform is closer than ever, says Timothy McBride, Ph.D., health economist and associate dean of public health at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. McBride says that there is still much work to be done with health care reform and contentious issues remain. Among those are the public option, how the legislation will be financed, the generosity of the coverage, Medicare Advantage reforms and whether there will be mandates for employers to offer coverage. (Video available)