Medicine & Health

Pregnancy tests can sometimes give a false negative result to women several weeks into their pregnancies, according to research by Ann Gronowski, professor of pathology and immunology at the School of Medicine. Her findings led the FDA to change its standards for evaluating new pregnancy tests, but old tests with the false-negative problem are still on the market.

An international team led by Gary Weil, MD, of the School of Medicine is poised to help eliminate two disabling tropical diseases as public health problems. A large grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will fund clinical trials and other studies aimed at preventing new cases of elephantiasis and river blindness.

Centene Corp. and the School of Medicine announced a partnership April 8 to transform and accelerate research into treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, breast cancer, diabetes and obesity. As part of the partnership, Centene will fund up to $100 million over 10 years in research at the university.

The Trump administration said this week that the whole Affordable Care Act should be struck down in the courts. Doing so would have profound implications on health care and the economy, says an expert on health economics at Washington University in St. Louis.

Pregnant women who use cannabis may slightly increase the risk their unborn child will develop psychosis later in life, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Probiotics – living bacteria taken to promote digestive health – evolve once inside the body and have the potential to become less effective and sometimes even harmful, according to a new study from the School of Medicine. The findings suggest that developers of probiotic-based therapeutics must consider how the probiotics might change after administration.

Weight gain during pregnancy and postpartum are important causes of long-term weight gain and the development of obesity-related diseases among women. A new study from Washington University in St. Louis finds providing a home-based lifestyle intervention effectively minimizes excess maternal weight gain during pregnancy and through 12-months postpartum in underserved African American women with obesity.

Although medications to treat opioid use disorder are safe and effective, most people who could benefit from these treatments do not receive them, finds a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Brown School’s David Patterson Silver Wolf was one of the authors of the report.

The School of Medicine’s Rupa Patel, MD, and Anne Glowinski, MD, are working with a Bangladeshi organization to help deliver mental health care to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Patel also is gathering forensic evidence of violence the Rohingya suffered.

With the aid of a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health, School of Medicine researchers are studying why immunity elicited by the flu vaccine wanes so rapidly. The goal is a better, longer-lasting flu vaccine.