Medicine & Health

A new study that enrolled nearly 50,000 women has revealed that digital mammography can detect breast cancer better than conventional film-based mammography in certain groups of women.

Cancer patients infected with either of two strains of human papillomavirus were twice as likely to die of their disease.

“We really thought that myosin II was just a motor, but it seems to help steer as well,” said senior investigator Paul C. Bridgman.

WUSM researchers believe a vitamin found in vegetables may serve as a safe, ingestible sunscreen for humans. They are currently looking for volunteers for a related study.

Millions of Americans suffer from food allergies, and those numbers are quickly rising. Allergic reactions can range from rashes to life-threatening anaphylactic shock. WUSM physician James Wedner reveals a number of details about food allergies in the following St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

The Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy will kick off its fall forum series with a half-day symposium on “Taxing Temptation: Excise Taxes and Health” from 9 a.m.-noon Sept. 23 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom in Anheuser-Busch Hall. The series, which is free and open to the public, also includes forums on education finance (Nov. 4) and monetary policy (Nov. 30).

Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital, the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center and Washington University School of Medicine proudly announce the opening of the new Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital. Together, the three organizations will bring world-class cancer care to St. Charles County.

Below is a link to the Washington University news release about the U.S. News & World Report undergraduate rankings for 2004-05: http://news-info.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/3627.html To view a full listing of U.S. News magazine, book and Web-only rankings for 2004-05, please visit the U.S. News & World Report site: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/rankindex_brief.php

WUSTL pharmacogenetics researchers are using National Institutes of Health funding to find ways to personalize cancer treatments.

Researchers are trying to reduce the number of pills needed by AIDS patients.The public perception of AIDS treatment — a cocktail of many different pills taken several times a day and sometimes even in the middle of the night — has largely been erased in the United States thanks to advances in drug design and delivery. Although textbook treatment guidelines still call for patients to take a few AIDS medications twice a day, many patients in industrialized countries are now able to keep sufficiently high medication levels in their bodies with once-daily doses. Now researchers in an international collaborative that includes the Aids Clinical Trials Unit (ACTU) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have begun an ambitious new study to see if this treatment paradigm can be implemented in Third World countries.