Medicine & Health

Bob Boston/WUSTL PhotoTwo surgeons at the same hospital perform the same operations on patients with similar medical histories. Their costs to the hospital are similar, right? Not necessarily. There could be a difference as high as 45 percent. New research from Washington University in St. Louis finds that even when controlling for complexity of the operation and patient risk, surgeons incurred a wide range of hospital costs. More…

Courtesy image/WUSTL PhotoFor some deaf children, a plastic slide is a more formidable foe than the school wedgie-giver. Static electricity buildup from sliding down a plastic slide — instant summertime fun for those with normal hearing — can temporarily silence the world to cochlear implantees. Two electrical engineers at Washington University in St. Louis tested static electricity buildup — which can zap a cochlear implant — on sliding children to quantify the sparks. Thanks to some publicity and increased awareness, their research has inspired the St. Louis County Parks and Recreation Department to consider the problem, and an anti-static coating company to try to solve it. More…

Olga Pontes & Craig PikaardThe protein HDA6 shows up as a red stain in this Arabidopsis leaf cell nucleus.A team of researchers, including biologists at Washington University in St. Louis, has discovered the key role one protein plays in a major turn-off — in this case, the turning off of thousands of nearly identical genes in a hybrid plant. Studying the phenomenon of nucleolar dominance, in which one parental set of ribosomal genes in a hybrid is silenced, Craig Pikaard, Ph.D., Washington University professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and colleagues have identified the protein HDA6 as an important player in the silencing. More…

Researchers at the School of Medicine have found that obese elderly people can improve their physical function and lessen frailty by losing weight and exercising.

Researchers seeking insights into kidney failure in human infants have located the source of a 30-year-old mystery mutation that causes similar problems in a mouse line.

Photo by Robert BostonEmployees from Brown Shoe Company and physicians and staff from the Siteman Cancer CenterSiteman Cancer Center got quite a bargain when Brown Shoe Company, QVC and the Fashion Footwear Association of New York (FFANY) teamed up to offer half-price shoes at the 12th Annual QVC Presents “FFANY Shoes on Sale” event during October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The net proceeds benefit breast cancer research and education programs across the country.

The discovery by researchers at the School of Medicine of a mutated gene associated with a rare skin disorder should provide insight into more common diseases such as emphysema and aortic aneurysms.

The recent court ruling that allowed the School of Medicine to maintain control of tissue samples vital to cancer research was a victory for science as well as research participants’ rights, said Medical School Dean Larry Shapiro in a letter to the editors of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

YamaguchiWashington University orthopaedic surgeon Ken Yamaguchi, M.D., has been elected to the board of directors of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). He will serve the academy as member-at-large.

The results of a new study at the School of Medicine could eventually have oncologists removing their specialties from their shingles by making therapy based on a tumor’s anatomical location obsolete. When the researchers compared eight different kinds of cancerous tumors, they saw that whether the tumor was, for instance, a breast tumor, lung tumor or colon tumor didn’t correlate to how the cancers interacted with a standard anticancer drug.