Medicine & Health

Scientists testing sleep’s effects on learning have devised a model that presents fruit flies with a simple choice: fly into a lighted vial or a darkened one.Staying awake slows down our brains, scientists have long recognized. Mental performance is at its peak after sleep but inevitably trends downward throughout the day, and sleep deprivation only worsens these effects. For the first time, researchers at the School of Medicine have found a way to stop this downward slide. When scientists genetically tweaked a part of the brain involved in learning and memory in fruit flies, the flies were unimpaired even after being deprived of sleep.

More than 300 physicians at the School of Medicine have been named to The Best Doctors In America for 2008. The number is twice that of any other physicians’ group in St. Louis and more than any other physicians’ group in the Midwest.

Ultra-miniature bialy-shaped particles — called nanobialys because they resemble tiny versions of the flat, onion-topped rolls popular in New York City — could soon be carrying medicinal compounds through patients’ bloodstreams to tumors or atherosclerotic plaques. The nanobialys are an important addition to the stock of diagnostic and disease-fighting nanoparticles developed by researchers at the School of Medicine.

Photo by Tim ParkerSreenivasa Jonnalagadda, M.D., and J. Christopher Eagon, M.D., performing the first TOGA procedure in the United States.Doctors at the School of Medicine have performed the first non-surgical procedure in the United States that restricts the size of the stomach to treat obesity. The investigational procedure was performed under direct endoscopic visualization with specialized instruments passed into the stomach through the mouth. The first U.S. patient received the treatment on July 23 at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but endurance exercise seems to make it younger. According to a study conducted at the School of Medicine, older people who did endurance exercise training for about a year ended up with metabolically much younger hearts. The researchers also showed that by one metabolic measure, women benefited more than men from the training.

The Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) at the School of Medicine will lead a six-year, $16 million international research collaboration dedicated to understanding inherited forms of Alzheimer’s disease. The National Institute on Aging (NIA) will fund the project.

Barry Sleckman, associate professor of pathology and immunology, has been named director of the Division of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine at the School of Medicine. The appointment was announced by Skip Virgin, Edward Mallinckrodt Professor and head of Pathology and Immunology.

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.