Medicine & Health

Susan E. Mackinnon, M.D., was named president of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons at its recent annual meeting in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Mackinnon is the Sydney M. Jr. and Robert H. Shoenberg Professor of Surgery and chief of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the School of Medicine.

Women who get most of their daily calcium from food have healthier bones than women whose calcium comes mainly from supplemental tablets, say researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Surprisingly, this is true even though the supplement takers have higher average calcium intake. More…

A probe of the upper echelons of the human brain’s chain-of-command has found strong evidence that there are not one but two complementary commanders in charge of the brain, according to neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. It’s as if Captains James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard were both on the bridge and in command of the same starship Enterprise.

St. Louis researchers have identified common DNA variations that underlie susceptibility to fever after smallpox vaccination. Their finding is the first to link individual differences written into the genetic code with a vaccine-related complication – albeit a mild one. Most of the eight genetic alterations the scientists identified increased the likelihood of fever after smallpox vaccination. A few, however, reduced fever risk.

Scientists probing the details of viral infection have discovered an intriguing surprise: in mice, herpes viruses hijack their host cells’ tools for fixing DNA damage and use those tools to enhance their own reproduction.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Stress and Alzheimer’s (week of June 6) • Dietary calcium is better (week of June 13) • Treating prostate problems (week of June 20) • Fireworks safety (week of June 27)

The list of reasons you shouldn’t smoke has gotten longer. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are reporting that smoking interferes with ligament healing. Each year in the United States there are more than 20 million reported ligament injuries, and MCL injuries—which affect a ligament supporting the knee joint—are the most common. Studying mice with MCL injuries, the team discovered cigarette smoking impairs the recruitment of cells to the injury site and delays healing following ligament repair surgery.

An X-ray of a case of scoliosis.Physicians have recognized scoliosis, the abnormal curvature of the spine, since the time of Hippocrates, but its causes have remained a mystery — until now. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and collaborating institutions have discovered a gene that underlies the condition, which affects about three percent of all children. The finding lays the groundwork for determining how the genetic defect leads to the C- and S-shaped curves that characterize scoliosis.

HamvasAaron Hamvas, M.D., a renowned pediatrician in newborn medicine and a leading authority on a lethal infant lung disease, has been appointed the first James P. Keating, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine. Hamvas is medical director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and of Nursery Services at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Scientists revealed in November 2006 that stress increases production in mice of a brain peptide critical to Alzheimer’s disease. Now the same group has shown that blocking a different brain peptide slows the stress-induced increase, opening a new door to treatment. Researchers from the School of Medicine report the results online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.