Medicine & Health

Iowa StateIn recent years, scientists have decoded the DNA of humans and a menagerie of creatures but none with genes as complex as a stalk of corn, the latest genome to be unraveled. A team of scientists led by The Genome Center at the School of Medicine published the completed corn genome in the Nov. 20 journal Science, an accomplishment that will speed efforts to develop better crop varieties to meet the world’s growing demands for food, livestock feed and fuel.

For years, it has been widely assumed that older adults may experience memory loss and other cognitive problems following surgery. But a new study by School of Medicine researchers questions that assumption. In the 575 patients they studied, the investigators did not detect any long-term cognitive declines attributable to surgery.

Alexander Garza, M.D., assistant secretary for health affairs and chief medical officer of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will come to the School of Medicine to speak about the H1N1 flu pandemic.

Scientists at the School of Medicine are investigating a new way to fight the flu. With funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, they will establish a Drug Discovery Center to identify compounds that enhance the body’s natural virus-killing mechanisms to overcome the flu.

Switching from a low-fat, plant-based diet to one high in fat and sugar alters the collection of microbes living in the gut in less than a day, with obesity-linked microbes suddenly thriving, according to new research at the School of Medicine. The study was based on transplants of human intestinal microbes into germ-free mice.

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, says Mark R. Rank, Ph.D., poverty expert at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work.

School of Medicine researhers have shown that highly targeted radiation therapy improves survival and lessens treatment-related complications in cervical cancer patients. The technique, called intensity-modulated radiation therapy, is widely accepted for treating many cancers of the pelvic region, head and neck, and central nervous system, but its for cervical cancer is not as common.

Washington University has been awarded nearly $80 million in funding from the 2009 American Recovery and Re-investment Act (ARRA) to support research across a broad range of projects, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, renewable energy, diabetes and climate change.

The Prevention Research Center (PRC) in St. Louis is launching a multinational research project focused on preventing the leading causes of death in Hispanics in the United States and Latin America.

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.”