School of Medicine

Building on a growing body of work that suggests dietary nitrate improves muscle performance in many elite athletes, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that drinking concentrated beet juice — high in nitrates — increases muscle power in patients with heart failure.

David A. Hunstad, MD, associate professor of pediatrics, has been named director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the School of Medicine. A School of Medicine graduate, Hunstad previously served as director of the pediatric infectious diseases fellowship program and co-founded the Pediatric Physician-Scientist Training Program

Scott Frey, PhD, has been named associate director of the Program in Occupational Therapy at Washington University School of Medicine and head of its Rehabilitation and Participation Science (RAPS) PhD program.

Thirty-six staff members in the Facilities Management Department at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis recently earned the Sustainable Facility Professional credential from the International Facility Management Association.

Three antibiotics that, individually, are not effective against a drug-resistant staph infection can kill the deadly pathogen when combined as a trio, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. They have killed the bug — methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) — in test tubes and laboratory mice, and believe the same strategy may work in people.

Bacteria aren’t the only non-human invaders to colonize the gut shortly after a baby’s birth. Viruses also set up house there, according to new research led by Lori Holtz, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Positive mentions on Twitter about hookah smoking may promote the assumption that it is less harmful than smoking cigarettes even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that hookah smoking has many of the same harmful toxins and carries the same health risks, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis led by Melissa J. Krauss, seen here with a hookah pipe.

Timothy Blair Burnight, 28, a doctoral candidate in the Program in Physical Therapy at Washington University School of Medicine, died unexpectedly Sept. 4, 2015, at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

St. Louis College of Pharmacy and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are joining forces to find better, safer and more effective ways to use prescription medications to improve health. Researchers from the two institutions are collaborating to create the Center for Clinical Pharmacology. The center’s director will be Evan D. Kharasch, MD, PhD, the Russell D. and Mary B. Shelden Professor of Anesthesiology and professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the School of Medicine.

Washington University researchers and international partners go to great lengths to help solve some of the world’s most pervasive health challenges.