Medicine & Health

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Flu vaccine (week of Nov. 3) • Cutting calories doesn’t help memory (week of Nov. 10) • Great American Smokeout (week of Nov. 17) • Gut microbes control fat cells (week of Nov. 24)

Photo by Dawn Majors, St. Louis Post-DispatchRoger Beck gets a kiss from his son Denton.Roger Beck cried for the first time in 22 years thanks to Randal Paniello, associate professor of otolaryngology. Paniello performed the first saliva gland transplant in the United States to restore Beck’s ability to produce tears. Learn more about the procedure in this St. Louis Post-Dispatch feature.

Yet another disease has been linked to obesity. Samuel Klein, director of the WUSM Center for Human Nutrition, reports fatty liver disease, usually associated with excess alcohol consumption, is on the rise among those who don’t drink too much. One common factor linked to the increase is obesity. Read more in the following Post-Dispatch article.

The Washington University Center for the Study of Ethics & Human Values will sponsor a symposium on tort reform and medical malpractice from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 22 in Whitaker Hall. The symposium, titled “Medical Malpractice and Tort Reform: Finding Truth and Common Ground,” is free and open to the public.

A class of anti-seizure medications slows the rate of aging in roundworms, according to researchers at the School of Medicine. When exposed to drugs used to treat epilepsy in humans, worms lived longer and retained youthful functions longer than normal.

A little anxiety can be a good thing when it comes to cancer symptoms, according to researchers at the School of Medicine. They report that people with low overall anxiety levels were more apt to ignore symptoms of rectal cancer for long periods of time, thereby delaying treatment.

Time is the most important factor when dealing with stroke, the third leading cause of death in the U.S. But before a person can get a loved one crucial medical treatment in time, he or she must know what signs to heed. WUSM physicians and stroke experts Mark Goldberg and Maurizio Corbetta discuss stroke and its symptoms in the following St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

RossWill Ross, M.D., associate dean and director of the Office of Diversity at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received the 2005 Distinguished Community Service in Medicine Award by the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. State Celebration Commission.

It is now significantly easier to search long stretches of DNA for genetic changes associated with disease, thanks to scientists at the School of Medicine.

Charles F. Knight and Joanne Knight have donated $5 million to the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. The commitment will endow and establish the Joanne Knight Breast Health Center and Breast Cancer Program.