Newsroom Stories

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Stress and Alzheimer’s (week of June 6) • Dietary calcium is better (week of June 13) • Treating prostate problems (week of June 20) • Fireworks safety (week of June 27)

The list of reasons you shouldn’t smoke has gotten longer. Researchers at the School of Medicine are reporting that smoking interferes with ligament healing. Each year in the United States there are more than 20 million reported ligament injuries, and MCL injuries — which affect a ligament supporting the knee joint — are the most common. Studying mice with MCL injuries, the team discovered cigarette smoking impairs the recruitment of cells to the injury site and delays healing following ligament repair surgery.

Women who get most of their daily calcium from food have healthier bones than women whose calcium comes mainly from supplemental tablets, say researchers at the School of Medicine. Surprisingly, this is true even though the supplement takers have higher average calcium intake.

An X-ray of a case of scoliosis.Physicians have recognized scoliosis, the abnormal curvature of the spine, since the time of Hippocrates, but its causes have remained a mystery — until now. Researchers at the School of Medicine and collaborating institutions have discovered a gene that underlies the condition, which affects about three percent of all children. The finding lays the groundwork for determining how the genetic defect leads to the C- and S-shaped curves that characterize scoliosis.

The list of reasons you shouldn’t smoke has gotten longer. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are reporting that smoking interferes with ligament healing. Each year in the United States there are more than 20 million reported ligament injuries, and MCL injuries—which affect a ligament supporting the knee joint—are the most common. Studying mice with MCL injuries, the team discovered cigarette smoking impairs the recruitment of cells to the injury site and delays healing following ligament repair surgery.

An X-ray of a case of scoliosis.Physicians have recognized scoliosis, the abnormal curvature of the spine, since the time of Hippocrates, but its causes have remained a mystery — until now. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and collaborating institutions have discovered a gene that underlies the condition, which affects about three percent of all children. The finding lays the groundwork for determining how the genetic defect leads to the C- and S-shaped curves that characterize scoliosis.

An exhibit of 29 iron sculptures by the Israeli artist Orna Ben-Ami is on display at Washington University School of Medicine through fall 2007. The sculptures can be viewed in the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center, Olin Residence Hall, Bernard Becker Medical Library, McDonnell Pediatric Research building, and other locations around campus.

Craig J. Nickels, co-founder of Alignment Capital Group, joined the Washington University Investment Management Company as director of private markets effective June 1.

HamvasAaron Hamvas, M.D., a renowned pediatrician in newborn medicine and a leading authority on a lethal infant lung disease, has been appointed the first James P. Keating, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine. Hamvas is medical director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and of Nursery Services at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Scientists revealed in November 2006 that stress increases production in mice of a brain peptide critical to Alzheimer’s disease. Now the same group has shown that blocking a different brain peptide slows the stress-induced increase, opening a new door to treatment. Researchers from the School of Medicine report the results online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.