Medicine & Health

Balancing independence and rules can be tough for parents with teenagers.Adolescence is often viewed as a time when children regularly push their parents’ patience to the limits. However, the trials and tribulations of a mother and father may be outweighed by the drastic life changes the teenagers themselves face, and parents should bear this in mind, says WUSM physician Katie Plax in the following St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

Park hosts a party for cerebral palsy patients from around the world.T.S. Park, M.D., the Shi H. Hung Professor of Neurosurgery and neurosurgeon in chief at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, recently received the Korean Overseas Compatriots Award from the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) at a ceremony in Seoul. The network presents the national award to people in the fields of natural science, societal service, the arts and business who enhance the image and reputation of the country while living abroad

StraubeFor many people, their early twenties can be some of life’s most stressful. It’s an adjustment period of being on your own for the first time, for college graduations and the stress of finding and landing that first job. But for 24 year-old Melissa Straube of Highland, IL, that stress was compounded by words she didn’t expect to ever hear at her young age: “You have breast cancer.”

Jonathan Gitlin will serve as director of the new Division of Genetics and Genomic Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics.The separate worlds of patient care and genomic science will be brought together in the new Division of Genetics and Genomic Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine. Plans for the division map out a model of individualized medical care in which physicians look to a patients’ genetic makeup to determine the most effective treatment.

Newborn mice and dogs with hemophilia A were restored to normal health through gene therapy developed by researchers at the School of Medicine. The technique introduced into the animals’ cells a gene that makes clotting factor VIII, a protein missing because of a genetic defect.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Raw foods lead to low bone mass (week of April 6) • Genomic analysis for critically ill (week of April 13) • Oxygen causes cataracts (week of April 20) • Botox for foot ulcers (week of April 27)

Fatty molecules may modulate the electrical characteristics of nerve and heart cells by regulating the properties of key cell pores, according to research conducted at the School of Medicine.

A new facility for obesity research and treatment will be established at the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital thanks to a $5 million donation from the Dr. Robert C. Atkins Foundation. Read more from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Magnified nanoparticlesSpecially designed nanoparticles can reveal tiny cancerous tumors that are invisible to ordinary means of detection, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Researchers demonstrated that very small human melanoma tumors growing in mice — indiscernible from the surrounding tissue by direct MRI scan — could be “lit up” and easily located. Because the nanoparticles can be engineered to carry a variety of substances, they also may be able to deliver cancer-fighting drugs to malignant tumors.

Yellowing of the eye’s lens due to age-related nuclear sclerotic cataractResearchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis may be a step closer to understanding what causes cataracts, with the hope of one day being able to prevent them. In a new study published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology, the researchers report oxygen may be the culprit.