Medicine & Health

A dotted line indicates the former position of the thyroid in this child.When a child inherits an abnormal gene that leads to thyroid cancer, surgical removal of the thyroid gland before the cancer spreads is the only sure cure. Now a new study shows it is best to take out the thyroid before a child turns eight to guarantee a life free of thyroid cancer. The researchers tracked the effectiveness of preemptive thyroid removal in 50 at-risk children ranging in age from three to 19 years. All patients were followed for at least five years at Washington University School of Medicine and at Duke University School of. The surgeons found that none of the 22 children who were under eight at the time of surgery showed signs of thyroid cancer five or more years later. However, they did find indications of thyroid cancer in six of the 28 children who were older than eight when they had surgery to remove the thyroid gland.

Detecting breast cancer recurrence with a simple blood test.Physicians treating women with breast cancer recognize the need for a specific and sensitive method to monitor disease recurrence, so they should be encouraged by a new study that describes a biomarker that seems to fill those criteria. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that mammaglobin, a protein secreted by breast tumor cells, can readily be detected in the blood serum of patients with metastatic breast cancer using an inexpensive, reliable clinical test.

Sonograms show mouse tune.Research by Timothy Holy showing that mice sing in the presence of mates was picked up by news organizations around the globe. Click here to see a sampling of the media coverage.

Researchers studying a mouse model of neurofibromatosis 1 (NF1), a genetic condition that causes childhood brain tumors, have found their second new drug target in a year, a protein called methionine aminopeptidase-2 (MetAP2).

Scientists have known for decades that female lab mice or their pheromones cause male lab mice to make ultrasonic vocalizations. But a new paper from researchers at the School of Medicine establishes for the first time that the utterances of the male mice are songs.

Soon it will be possible for twice as many underserved women to be screened for breast cancer because of a grant to Dione Farria, M.D., and Katherine Jahnige Mathews, M.D., of the Siteman Cancer Center at the School of Medicine.

An international team of scientists this week published the first complete draft of a map of human genetic variability, known to scientists as the human haplotype map or HapMap. The HapMap pushes biomedical science a large step closer to the era when analysis of patient DNA will provide important guidance to diagnosis and treatment.

By comparing genetic data of superbly healthy individuals to those of cancer patients, scientists at the School of Medicine hope to unlock the secrets to long, healthy lives. They’re looking to develop a blood test to detect potential tumors before they begin. Learn more about the WUSM cancer genetics research led by Paul Goodfellow in this St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

Alex Evers (left) examines proteins with colleague Joe Henry Steinbach.Alex S. Evers of the School of Medicine has been elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors medical scientists in the United States can receive. Evers was honored for his professional achievement in the health sciences, specifically in the area of anesthesiology.

A molecule that has long been an obstacle to cancer chemotherapy and drug treatments for brain disorders may soon become an ally in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, according to researchers at the School of Medicine and the University of Rochester.