Medicine & Health

When a major branch of the mouse immune system is disabled, a normally harmless virus can rapidly mutate into a lethal one, according to WUSM researchers. These findings may help clinicians better understand how otherwise harmless viruses can cause severe disease among patients with weakened or suppressed immune systems.

That’s using your brain. For the first time in humans, a team headed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis has placed an electronic grid atop patients’ brains to gather motor signals that enable patients to play a computer game using only the signals from their brains.

WUSTL researchers have found no convincing evidence that people can delay or hasten their own deaths through sheer will.Many of us know stories about terminally ill friends or relatives who were able to battle their illnesses in order to survive until a birthday or other important occasion. In much of medicine, it’s an accepted “truth” that people can hang on or give up and somehow influence the timing of their own deaths. But in reviewing every study on the subject of delaying death, Washington University behavioral medicine researchers have found that there’s no evidence to support the idea that terminally ill people can have an effect on when they die.

In this micrograph of a neuron, green dye highlights proteins linked to nerve cell damage and death during stroke.Brain cells in danger of exciting other nearby brain cells to death may be able to close temporarily, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Scientists simulated stroke-like conditions in cultured rat brain cells that use glutamate, an excitatory chemical messenger linked to nerve damage and death during strokes. But when they created those conditions, the researchers found that glutamate transmission was suppressed in what may be an attempt by neurons to limit the damage caused by catastrophic events such as strokes.

GrigsbyDoctors regularly use positron emission tomography (PET) scans to diagnose cervical cancer, taking advantage of the technique’s ability to highlight metabolic differences in cancerous tissues. But PET is rarely used for follow-up assessment of cervical cancer patients after treatment. A study in the June 1 issue of Journal of Clinical Oncology shows that post-treatment PET scans could help physicians better predict which patients are largely cancer-free as a result of their treatment and which patients may soon be likely to need additional treatment.

Lung transplantation increases the survival of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) by an average of almost four-and-a-half years, according to research led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Getting treated for a common type of cancer just became easier: An international team of surgeons including two at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has determined that minimally invasive surgery is as safe and effective as standard open surgery for most patients with cancer confined to the colon.

Requiring hospital workers and patient families to wear protective gowns when they visit patients with a drug-resistant bacteria provides infection control benefits that significantly outweigh gown costs, according to a new study led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Areas of red and yellow show increased uptake of the altanserin tracer due to binding to the serotonin receptors.Most of us feel sad from time to time, even very sad, but during a bout of clinical depression, a person is unable to escape their low mood for several weeks at a time. A popular and effective treatment for depression involves a class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Those drugs increase serotonin levels in the brain and help relieve symptoms of depression, and most scientists believe the brain chemical serotonin plays a key role in depression. Now neuroscience researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that in people who are depressed, a key brain structure has an abnormally low number of cellular serotonin receptors.

Neurons that have been infected with West Nile Virus.The cold winter is over, and spring rains and warmer weather mean that mosquito season is coming. Since 1999, summer mosquitoes have meant a risk for West Nile Virus. No one knows what 2004 will bring, but the season seems to have started early. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) already is reporting the presence of the virus in mosquitoes, birds and other animals in nine states. There even is confirmation of a human case in Ohio. Infectious diseases specialists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis remind that the people at greatest risk are those 50 and older and those with weakened immune systems. Younger people also can acquire the infection, but their risk is significantly lower.