Newsroom Stories

Researchers, led by Jean E. Schaffer, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a $4.7 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to investigate heart disease in patients with diabetes.

Exposure to stress can increase the risk for violent behaviors and depressive symptoms for African-American young adults. Different types of stress, particularly racial discrimination, can influence the level of this risk, finds a new study by Lorena Estrada-Martínez, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

A change in the formula of a frequently abused prescription painkiller has many abusers switching to a drug that is potentially more dangerous, according to School of Medicine researchers. Since the formula change makes inhaling or injecting the opioid drug OxyContin more difficult, many users are switching to heroin.

Scientists have assembled the most detailed chronology to date of the human brain’s long, slow slide into full-blown Alzheimer’s disease. Through an international research partnership known as the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network (DIAN), scientists at Washington University and elsewhere evaluated pre-symptomatic markers of Alzheimer’s disease in subjects from families genetically predisposed to develop the disorder.

Children with a rare syndrome that includes a form of insulin-dependent diabetes have brain abnormalities that appear to set the stage for cognitive problems later in life, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Scientists, including Tamara Hershey, PhD, had assumed those brain changes occurred late in the disease process, but the new findings suggest that some changes occur early in childhood.

Working in mice, surgeons and scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, have captured the first images of a beating heart at a resolution so detailed they can track individual immune cells swarming into the heart muscle, causing the inflammation that is so common after a heart attack or heart surgery.

Two WUSTL professors — Peter J. Kastor, PhD, and Jessica Rosenfeld, PhD — have been named 2012 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) fellows. Kastor, professor of history and American culture studies, both in Arts & Sciences, will pursue research on Creating a Federal Government, 1789-1829. Rosenfeld, associate professor of English in Arts & Sciences, will work on her book Envying thy Neighbor: Pleasure, Identity and Gender in Late Medieval Literature.

Washington University Department of Pediatrics and St. Louis Children’s Hospital have been catapulted into the national spotlight by the simultaneous election of five pediatric faculty into the top national leadership roles in large and distinguished medical societies.

Michael Runiewicz has been named director of Student Financial Services at Washington University in St. Louis. Previously, Runiewicz was associate director of Student Financial Services. Runiewicz replaces Bill Witbrodt, who retired after more than 20 years of service to Washington University June 30.

​Stem cells that come from a specific part of the developing brain help fuel the growth of brain tumors caused by an inherited condition, researchers, including David H. Gutmann, MD, PhD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report.