School of Medicine

Five faculty members at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis recently were elected to the Society for Pediatric Research, which aims to improve child health through research, professional collaboration and advocacy. They are Megan A. Cooper, MD, PhD; Brian J. DeBosch, MD, PhD; Laura G. Schuettpelz, MD, PhD; Indi Trehan, MD; and Yumirle P. Turmelle, MD.

Doctors sometimes prescribe antipsychotic drugs to treat behavior disorders in youths who don’t respond to traditional medications. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Florida Atlantic University have found that young people taking antipsychotics for as little as 12 weeks experience significant gains in body fat and also become less sensitive to insulin.

Christina Thurman, marketing team lead at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, was honored recently at the St. Louis American Foundation’s 18th Annual Salute to Excellence in Health Care awards luncheon.

Timothy Miller, MD, PhD, the Clayson Professor of Neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received the 2018 Sheila Essey Award from the American Academy of Neurology. The award includes $50,000 to support his work on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

School of Medicine researchers have found that the pathways through which various types of brain cells are damaged by Alzheimer’s disease varies, depending on the genes involved. The findings are published in the journal Genome Medicine.

Scientists from the School of Medicine have zeroed in on a culprit that spurs damaging inflammation in the heart following a heart attack. The guilty party is a type of immune cell that tries to heal the injured heart but instead triggers inflammation that leads to even more damage.

Youth baseball leagues often have fairly strict limits on how many innings pitchers can pitch or how many pitches a player can throw. But for girls playing fast-pitch softball, such guidelines are rare. School of Medicine sports medicine specialists have found that many pitchers aren’t getting enough time to recover and are experiencing shoulder fatigue, pain, weakness and injury.

Recognition of a disconnect between what patients with serious mental illness want and what health providers think they want appears to be a crucial step in reducing smoking rates among such patients, School of Medicine researchers found.

Parkinson’s disease is caused by the injury or death of brain cells known as dopaminergic neurons. A new School of Medicine study shows that people who take drugs that suppress the immune system are less likely to develop the disease, which is characterized by difficulty with movement.

Most people with the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma die less than 18 months after diagnosis. But a multicenter clinical trial of a personalized vaccine that targets the aggressive cancer has indicated improved survival rates for such patients. The study appears May 29 in the Journal of Translational Medicine.