Medicine & Health

COVID-19 caught public health systems in the U.S. unprepared to detect, track and contain the virus. The pandemic has exposed a multitude of deficiencies that require a wholesale reinvention of the field of public health, said four leading experts in a recently published essay.

Across 30 major U.S. cities, an average of 63% of public schools are located within 1,000 feet — about two city blocks — of a store selling tobacco and e-cigarette products, according to a comprehensive new study mapping tobacco retailers.

School of Medicine researchers are investigating whether a drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat rare diseases of an overactive immune system could help critically ill patients hospitalized with COVID-19.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have created a COVID-19 vaccine candidate from a replicating virus. This experimental vaccine has proven effective at preventing pneumonia in mice.

Up to 5,000 St. Louis County residents will be invited to participate in a survey and testing regarding COVID-19 to help gauge the impact the coronavirus has had on the county’s residents. Washington University in St. Louis and the St. Louis County Department of Public Health are leading the project.

As China’s government seeks solutions to social problems related to an evolving society, professional social work is increasingly entering new areas, including migrant and aging services, and is poised to take on a larger role in assisting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, say two experts from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

There have been more than 3.5 million requests for assistance to 2-1-1 help lines around the United States since the coronavirus pandemic hit this spring. The impact was immediate and dramatic, said a Brown School researcher who tracks calls to 2-1-1 help lines across the U.S.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have shown that levels of a specific protein in the blood rise as amyloid plaques form in the brain. The discovery could pave the way toward a blood-based test to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms appear.

To help efforts to find drugs and vaccines for COVID-19, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine developed a hybrid virus that will enable more scientists to enter the fight against the pandemic. The researchers genetically modified a mild virus.

A new study from Washington University School of Medicine has found that mice infected with Chikungunya virus get less sick and are less likely to transmit the virus to mosquitoes if they have healthy gut microbiomes.