Medicine & Health

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Peanut-butter staves off starvation (week of Sept. 5) • Self-managing diabetes (week of Sept. 12) • Genes and blood thinners (week of Sept. 19) • Dangers of crib bumper pads (week of Sept. 26)

A resistance gene that allows bacteria to beat an important class of antibiotics has started to appear in microorganisms taken from Midwestern patients, according to researchers at the School of Medicine. Less than a decade ago, scientists first noticed the BlaKPC gene in bacteria taken from East Coast patients.

Richard P. Sloan, professor of behavioral medicine in psychiatry at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital at the Columbia University Medical Center will respond to the question, “Is Religion Good for Your Health?” at 11 a.m., Wednesday, September 26 in Graham Chapel. Sloan’s talk is free and open to the public. The fall 2007 Assembly Series schedule continues through November 15. All programs are free and open to the public.

Although bumper pads are theoretically designed to prevent injury to a baby while in the crib or bassinet, the risk of accidental death or injury to an infant from using them outweighs their possible benefits, according to a new study by pediatric researchers at the School of Medicine. In the study, which appears in the September 2007 issue of The Journal of Pediatrics, the researchers reviewed three U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission databases for deaths related to crib bumpers and crib-related injuries from 1985-2005.

Richard P. Sloan, professor of behavorial medicine in psychiatry at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital at Columbia University School of Medicine, will answer the question, “Is Religion Good for your Health?” for the Assembly Series at 11 a.m., Wednesday, September 26, in Graham Chapel on Washington University’s Danforth Campus.

“Universal health care is getting the attention it deserves, but unfortunately, the proposals receiving the most attention ignore the ‘Big Leak,'” the enormous non-benefit costs incurred by health care providers who must match their billions of billings with thousands of differing private health care plans,” says Merton C. Bernstein, a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Coles Professor of Law Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis. “Putting everyone under the Medicare umbrella would eliminate that leak,” he says. Bernstein is available to discuss current universal health care proposals as well as the Medicare-for-all option.

PolonskyAs part of a national effort to translate basic science discoveries into treatments and cures for patients more quickly, the School of Medicine will lead a regional group of institutions under a new $50 million, five-year grant program that will greatly enhance clinical and translational research. The grant creates a comprehensive approach to ultimately improving patient care, says program principal investigator Kenneth S. Polonsky.

It doesn’t matter how small or large it is, if a cervical tumor glows brightly in a PET scan, it’s apt to be more dangerous than dimmer tumors. That’s the conclusion of a new study of cervical cancer patients at the School of Medicine. Lead author Elizabeth Kidd her colleagues, including researchers with the Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, report their findings in an upcoming issue of the journal Cancer.

Mark Manary, professor of pediatrics, assesses patients for malnutrition at a clinic in Malawi, Africa.An enriched peanut-butter mixture given at home is successfully promoting recovery in large numbers of starving children in Malawi, according to a group of researchers at the School of Medicine. Malnutrition affects 70 percent of all Malawian children with an estimated 13 percent of children dying from it before the age of five.

EberleinTimothy Eberlein, M.D., the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Distinguished Professor and director of the Siteman Cancer Center at the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, has been elected to a three-year term on the board of directors of the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI). Eberlein also serves as the Bixby Professor and chairman of the Department of Surgery.