Medicine & Health

Tumors have a unique vulnerability that can be exploited to make them more sensitive to heat and radiation, researchers at the School of Medicine report. The University radiation oncology researchers found that tumors have a built-in mechanism that protects them from heat (hyperthermia) damage and most likely decreases the benefit of hyperthermia and radiation as a combined therapy.

In early January, two patients undergoing kidney dialysis at St. Louis Children’s Hospital had sudden life-threatening allergic reactions that caused their eyes, lips and tongues to swell, raised their heart rates and dropped their blood pressures dangerously low. After the dialysis staff treated the children with medication that relieved the symptoms, they called infectious diseases specialist Alexis Elward, who sprung into action to help determine the cause. Little did she know it would spark an international investigation into a common blood thinner and a recall of the drug from the market.

Ensuring that the elderly have access to transportation while preventing age-related driving impairments will be the focus of the eighth annual Friedman Conference on Aging, “Are We Licensed for Life? Transportation and Driving Issues in an Aging Society.”

The influence of genetics increases as young women transition from their first drink to alcohol dependence. A team of researchers at the School of Medicine found that although environment is most influential in determining when drinking begins, genes play a larger role in advancing to problem drinking and alcohol dependence.

About 40 percent of African-Americans have a genetic variant that can protect them after heart failure and prolong their lives, according to research conducted at the School of Medicine and collaborating institutions. The genetic variant has an effect that resembles that of beta blockers, drugs widely prescribed for heart failure. The new study offers a reason why beta blockers don’t appear to benefit some African-Americans.

The estimated 19 million Americans living with chronic kidney disease (CKD) face a high risk of death from cardiovascular disease, usually related to high levels of blood phosphate. Now researchers at the School of Medicine have demonstrated that high blood phosphate directly stimulates calcification of blood vessels and that phosphate-binding drugs can decrease vascular calcification.

The School of Medicine and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN) have announced a research collaboration that aims to develop new and improved ways to diagnose and treat Alzheimer’s disease. The major focus of the alliance will be biomarkers, characteristic changes in the brain and spinal fluid that physicians can use to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and track its response to treatment.

A team of researchers from Washington University and the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion) in Haifa, Israel, has developed a technique to detect the ancestry of disease genes in hybrid, or mixed, human populations.

The ability of brain cells to take in substances from their surface is essential to the production of a key ingredient in Alzheimer’s brain plaques, neuroscientists at the School of Medicine have learned. The researchers used a drug to shut down the intake process, known as endocytosis, in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. The change led to a 70 percent drop in levels of amyloid beta, the protein fragment that clumps together to form Alzheimer’s plaques.

BarchThe Silvio Conte Center for Neuroscience Research at Washington University has a new director. Deanna Barch, associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences, of psychiatry and of radiology, takes over leadership of the center from John Csernansky, the former Gregory B. Couch Professor of Psychiatry, who has become the chairman of psychiatry at Northwestern University.