School of Medicine

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found a key difference in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease and those who are cognitively normal but still have the brain plaques that characterize this type of dementia.

They said it couldn’t be done. Suresh Vedantham, MD, professor of radiology and surgery, was planning a nationwide trial comparing treatments for deep vein thromboses — dangerous blood clots in the legs’ major veins. Prior attempts had failed to meet recruitment goals, but Vedantham was eager to test a new approach. Four years later, recruitment for ATTRACT (Acute Venous Thrombosis: Thrombus Removal with Adjunctive Catheter-Directed Thrombolysis), his NIH-sponsored trial, has crossed the halfway mark.

A process developed to increase efficiency and productivity in Japanese car factories has helped improve stroke treatment at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, report researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

​​Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will host a half-day seminar on forms of dementia that strike suddenly and can kill an individual in a few weeks or months.​

A major study in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) shows that bathing patients daily with an antimicrobial soap and applying antibiotic ointment to the nose reduced by 44 percent the bloodstream infections caused by dangerous pathogens, including the drug-resistant bacteria MRSA.

C. Robert Cloninger, MD, the Wallace Renard Professor of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, received an honorary doctorate at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden in a ceremony Oct. 17.

New research by Herbert W. “Skip” Virgin, MD, PhD, and colleagues may explain why advanced AIDS patients often develop gastrointestinal disease.

Helen E. Nash, MD, professor emerita (clinical) in pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, died Oct. 4, 2012, at Clermont Manor in Creve Coeur. She was 91.

Peter Nagele, MD, assistant professor of anesthesiology, has received the 2012 Presidential Scholar Award from the American Society of Anesthesiologists. The award, presented Oct. 15 at the society’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., is given each year to an anesthesiologist who has dedicated the formative years of his/her career to research.

A molecule involved in asthma and allergies has now been shown to make mice resistant to skin cancer, according to Raphael Kopan, PhD, and his colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.