Medicine & Health

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.

Outgrowth of nerve branchesA protein that helps the ends of growing nerve cells push forward is also involved in guidance of the nerve branches, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. They had believed that the protein, myosin II, was only a motor, but the new study shows it appears to help steer the nerve cells, too. By better understanding how nerve branches grow and move, the researchers hope one day to be able to regenerate injured nerves. They reported their findings in a recent issue of Nature Neuroscience.

Smoking can increase the risk of death from cervical cancer.Cervical cancer patients infected with either of two strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) were twice as likely to die of their disease as patients with other common strains of HPV, according to a study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In addition, smokers with these strains increased their risk of death even further. Nearly all cervical cancers are associated with HPV infection of the cervix.

College eating habits can pack on extra pounds.College students talk about the “Freshman 15.” That’s the typical number of credit hours a full-time student takes during a semester. Some also claim it’s the number of pounds students gain eating dorm food and studying all night. New work from researchers at Washington University in St. Louis confirms that most students do, indeed, gain weight in college. Reporting in the Journal of American College Health, the research team found that about 70 percent of students gained a significant amount of weight between the start of college and the end of sophomore year.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Daydreaming and Alzheimer’s (week of Sept. 7) • New insight into arthritis (week of Sept. 14) • Preventing wrong-site surgery (week of Sept. 21) • Intense hip fracture therapy (week of Sept. 28)