Medicine & Health

WU researchers have identified a protein sensor that detects norovirus (shown here), a highly contagious stomach bug.There’s no cure for the so-called stomach flu, a group of highly contagious viruses that can hit with a vengeance, causing nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Doctors’ standard advice: drink lots of fluids and let the virus run its course. Symptoms typically last only a couple of days, but they can be miserable ones. Now, scientists at the School of Medicine report they have identified the primary immune sensor that detects the presence of stomach viruses in the body.

Every moment we live, cells in our bodies are dying. One type of cell death activates an immune response while another type doesn’t. Now researchers at the School of Medicine and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis have figured out how some dying cells signal the immune system. They say the finding eventually could have important implications in the treatment of autoimmune diseases and cancer.

WooleyAn interdisciplinary team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, led by Karen L. Wooley, Ph.D., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences, is a step closer to delivering cancer-killing drugs to pediatric brain tumors, similar to the tumor that Senator Ted Kennedy is suffering from. Such tumors are often difficult to completely remove surgically; frequently, cancerous cells remain following surgery and the tumor returns. Chemotherapy, while effective at treating tumors, often harms healthy cells as well, leading to severe side effects especially in young children that are still developing their brain functions. In an effort to solve this problem, the Wooley lab has developed polymeric nanoparticles that can entrap doxorubicin, a drug commonly used in chemotherapy, and slowly release the drug over an extended time period.

Children with sickle cell disease often face severe pain, organ damage, recurrent strokes and repeated, prolonged hospital stays. Although there are medical interventions that can lessen the symptoms, there is no cure. Researchers at the School of Medicine are leading a nationwide, multicenter clinical trial to determine the effectiveness of transplanting blood stem cells from unrelated donors into children with severe sickle cell disease.

The sound of a noisy Chicago restaurant during the breakfast rush — the clang of plates and silverware and the clamor of many voices — was the crucial test of new hearing aid technology in a study conducted by researchers at the School of Medicine. The study showed that the hearing aids worked well in a noisy environment — the most challenging test for a hearing aid.

In a new study published in the journal Pediatrics, Paul T. Shattuck, Ph.D., professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis, found that families with similar demographics and nature of their children’s special needs have different out-of-pocket health expenditures depending on the state in which they live. “This is one of the few studies that focuses on families’ costs when caring for children with special needs, rather than the overall cost for society as a whole,” he says. Shattuck notes that wealthier states tend to have a lower average extra cost for caring for a child with special needs. “At the low end, families in Massachusetts paid an average of $560 for out-of-pocket medical expenses,” he says. “At the high end, families in Georgia shouldered an average of $970 in additional care expenses.” Editor’s note: Video and a complete rankings table are available.

The School of Medicine will receive approximately $9 million over 5 years to investigate new ways to diagnose and treat stroke. The new research center will become part of a national network of stroke centers.

Medical science may be a significant step closer to climbing into the driver’s seat of an important class of immune cells, researchers at the School of Medicine report in Nature Immunology.

Compact, bedside brain-activity monitors detected most seizures in at-risk infants, researchers at the School of Medicine showed. That means the compact units could assist clinicians in monitoring for electrical seizures until confirmation with conventional EEG (electroencephalography), the researchers assert in an article published in the June issue of Pediatrics.

MurphyResearchers have shown that they can put mouse embryonic stem cells to work building the heart, potentially moving medical science a significant step closer to a new generation of heart disease treatments that use human stem cells. Kenneth Murphy is senior author of the research at the School of Medicine.