Medicine & Health

Autism researchers at the School of Medicine are joining other scientists to image the brains of infants and attempt to identify anatomical and behavioral changes that may be linked to the onset of autism. The $10 million, NIH-funded Infant Brain Imaging Study allows investigators to analyze early brain development in children at risk for autism spectrum disorders by virtue of having an autistic sibling.

Neurobiologists at the School of Medicine have identified pathways that allow microscopic worms to survive in a low-oxygen, or hypoxic, environment. They believe the finding could have implications for conditions such as stroke, heart attack and cancer. Sensitivity to low oxygen helps determine how damaging those medical conditions can be.

People committed to improving the health of vulnerable communities and populations have a new degree option at Washington University in St. Louis — a Master of Public Health (MPH). The MPH Program at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work is accepting applications for its first class. The Brown School regularly hosts information sessions about its academic programs. The school plans a special half-day “Focus on MPH” event on February 13 from 8:30 – 1:30 p.m. Individuals who have applied or plan to apply for the fall 2009 semester should attend. The event will be held in Brown Hall Lounge.

Researchers seeking ways to defeat malaria have found a way to get help from the parasite that causes the disease. Scientists at the School of Medicine stepped aside and let Plasmodium falciparum, one of the deadliest strains of malaria, do a significant portion of the genetic engineering work in their new study.

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoFor the first time, WUSTL scientists have used gold nanocages to map sentinel lymph nodes in a rat noninvasively using photoacoustic tomography.

Half of the immune system has a hidden talent, researchers at the School of Medicine have discovered. They found the innate immune system, long recognized as a specialist in rapidly and aggressively combating invaders, has cells that can learn from experience and fight better when called into battle a second time. Scientists previously thought any such ability was limited to the immune system’s other major branch, the adaptive immune system.

Two international teams of researchers have made significant gains in understanding the genetic basis of psoriasis, a chronic skin condition that can be debilitating in some patients. Their research, involving thousands of patients, is reported in two studies published this week in the advance online Nature Genetics.

A new brain-imaging study is shedding light on what it means to “get lost” in a good book — suggesting that readers create vivid mental simulations of the sounds, sights, tastes and movements described in a textual narrative while simultaneously activating brain regions used to process similar experiences in real life.

Washington University graduate student Kim Lorenz collects yeast samples from Pennsylvania oak trees as part of a project to analyze how genes interact to produce complex traits.In recent years, genetic studies have uncovered hundreds of DNA variations linked to common diseases, such as cancer or diabetes, raising the prospect that scientists can gauge disease risk based on information in an individual’s genome. But the variations identified to date only account for a small percentage – typically one to three percent – of the overall genetic risk of any common disease.

The Master of Public Health Program at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work is accepting applications for its first class.