Medicine & Health

November Medical science & Health Tip Sheet

November Science & Technology Tip Sheet

A major factor contributing to Americans’ increasing body sizes appears to be increasing portion sizes.Obesity puts people at risk for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and cancer. It also decreases quality of life. But that’s not stopping Americans from eating and drinking more than ever before. Almost two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese, and a major factor contributing to increasing body sizes appears to be increasing portion sizes. Obesity researcher Samuel Klein, M.D., the Danforth Professor of Medicine and Nutritional Science at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, says the obesity epidemic continues to get worse in spite of a great deal of research about the dangers of being overweight and increasing numbers of people who are trying to lose weight. Part of the problem is that many people tend to eat what is put in front of them, and serving sizes are larger than ever before.

Patients treated in the GM-CSF pilot study showed a decrease in inflammation: an inflamed colon before treatment (top) and after, showing no pathologic abnormality.Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis continue to make progress in finding a potential treatment for Crohn’s disease, a chronic and serious inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract that affects about half a million people in the United States. Later this month, the research team of Joshua Korzenik, M.D., assistant professor of medicine, and Brian Dieckgraefe, M.D., Ph.D., also an assistant professor of medicine in the division of gastroenterology, will present preliminary data from patients with moderate to severe Crohn’s disease who were treated at 33 centers around the United States. Patients who received daily injections of a drug called GM-CSF (granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor), which stimulates the activity of certain cells in the immune system, tended improve. And although the data have not yet been presented, the results from the placebo-controlled phase II treatment study were positive.

Patients in intensive care units are kept alive with breathing machines, dialysis, tube feeding and other extraordinary measures until their bodies can begin to recover from critical illness or traumatic injury.Sepsis, sometimes called blood poisoning, is the leading cause of death among critically ill patients in the United States. For many years, scientists believed it was the result of an uncontrolled inflammatory response, but several studies that involved anti-inflammatory drugs were not successful at improving survival. Now, a research team led by Richard S. Hotchkiss, M.D., professor of anesthesiology and of medicine and associate professor of surgery and of molecular biology and pharmacology, and Irene E. Karl, Ph.D., research professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that how immune cells die in sepsis might be a key to whether patients survive. When immune cells die through a process known as programmed cell death, or apoptosis, a patient’s chance of survival appears to be much lower than if cells die through a different mechanism called necrosis.

At the time of the first MRI scans, the turquoise color shows areas of the hippocampus in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease that are shaped differently than in healthy older people. Two years later, even more changes have occurred, represented by the purple color.Even when people have no symptoms, their brains already may be dotted with the plaques and tangles that characterize Alzheimer’s disease. As treatments to halt the progress of Alzheimer’s disease appear on the horizon, scientists are looking for new ways to identify Alzheimer’s-associated changes in the brain before cognitive decline begins. By examining brain images, researchers, led by John G. Csernansky, M.D., the Gregory B. Couch Professor of Psychiatry, and Lei Wang, Ph.D., research associate in psychiatry, both at Washington University’s Silvio Conte Center for Neuroscience Research, found that the volume and shape of certain brain structures change in different patterns during Alzheimer’s disease than in healthy aging. They believe that someday using these imaging techniques may allow for earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, preferably before the most devastating symptoms appear.

Photo courtesy of Vanderbilt UniversityThe “CEO” in your brain appears to be concerned more about the consequences of your actions than how hard they are to produce. That is the implication of a detailed study of the neuronal activity in a critical area of the brain, called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), published in the Oct. 3 issue of the journal Science. The finding is important because the ACC plays a key role in disorders such as schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder in humans, suggests Joshua Brown, study co-author and WUSTL research associate in psychology.

October Medical Science & Health Tip Sheet

New lens replacement material may aid cataract patientsA gel-like material eventually could replace diseased and aging lenses in the eyes of patients with cataracts. The material also might eventually mean the end of bifocals and contact lenses for millions of people who suffer from presbyopia — literally “old vision” — a condition that makes it difficult for people over 40 to read without magnification. Researchers from the Veterans Affairs (VSA) Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine reported on the gel in New York at the 226th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. The technology could represent a totally different approach to the treatment of cataracts and presbyopia.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services announced today that Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will anchor a multi-institutional Midwest Regional Center for Excellence in Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research (MRCE). The center will be funded by a five-year, $35 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).