Medicine & Health

This image combines three MRI scans of a mouse: one is a typical scan showing internal organs, and the second two are scans tuned to the frequency of fluorine-laced nanoparticles (colored red and green).Nanoparticles developed by Washington University scientists in the Siteman Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence could soon allow researchers and physicians to directly track cells used in medical treatments using unique signatures from the ingested nanoparticle beacons. The nanoparticles contain a compound that can be detected by MRI scanners, and the researchers believe nanoparticle-labeled cells could be used to evaluate cancerous tumors and many medical therapies.

Diabetes is hard on the heart — adults with diabetes die from heart disease about two to four times more often than those without diabetes. And scientific evidence has suggested that blood fat levels are a source of this problem. Now a clinical study at the School of Medicine is investigating the link between blood fat and heart health.

Investigators at the Silvio Conte Center for the Neuroscience of Mental Disorders at the School of Medicine are recruiting schizophrenia patients and their siblings for a study to determine whether subtle differences in brain structure can predict who is at risk for developing the illness.

Washington University today joined a consortium of leading scientific and medical institutions around the country to warn Congress that persistent flat-funding of biomedical research could thwart advances in treatments for such diseases as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Following today’s Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS Committee hearing on funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Washington University and the eight other institutions issued a report at a Capitol Hill press conference on funding for U.S. medical research.

The basketball teams still need to play their way in, but a team of physicians already knows they’ll be on hand for the NCAA basketball tournament’s regional championship next weekend in St. Louis. The sports medicine specialists in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the School of Medicine will coordinate care at the NCAA Division I Men’s Midwest Regional March 23-25 at the Edward Jones Dome.

A team of investigators at the School of Medicine and other centers around the United States is evaluating dietary supplements to determine if they can prevent some of the damage from age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness in Americans over the age of 65.

Neuroscientists at the School of Medicine have linked a common post-stroke disability to impaired communication between brain regions. In the March 15 issue of Neuron, researchers report a tight correlation between the degree to which communication was blocked and the severity of patients’ symptoms.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Side effects of AIDS medications (week of Mar. 7) • Belly fat’s role in disease (week of Mar. 14) • Aneurysm-causing enzyme identified (week of Mar. 21) • Smoking delays ligament healing (week of Mar. 28)

An illustration from “When Grandpa Comes Home: A Story About Stroke,” an online book that teaches children how to cope when a relative suffers a strokeSpeedy treatment is essential to saving lives and preventing brain damage during a stroke. But the rapid pace of events also can leave patients and family members confused about what has happened and what to expect. That’s especially true for children whose parents or grandparents have a stroke. Now an online book is available to teach children about strokes at www.strokecenter.org/patients. More…

On the battlefield, a soldier’s hearing can be permanently damaged in an instant by the boom of an explosion, and thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq have some permanent hearing loss. But what if soldiers could take a pill before going on duty that would prevent damage to hearing? Research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests a medicinal form of hearing protection may someday be a possibility. More…