School of Medicine

​​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.​

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.

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.

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.

Scanning the DNA of two people with a rare disease has led scientists to identify the precise genetic error responsible for their disorder, which causes persistent lung, sinus and ear infections, male infertility, and sometimes a reversed orientation of major organs in the body. The defect affects hair-like structures called cilia that extend from many cells in the body.

Wayne M. Yokoyama, MD, and Charles F. Zorumski, MD, have been elected to the Institute of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences. Membership in the organization is one of the highest honors physician-scientists in the U.S. can receive.​

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.

Some Halloween news tips refuse to die, rising from the newsroom morgue each October with a stubborn resolve to once again help trick-or-treaters stay safe on Halloween night. Here’s three timely safety tips that remain very much undead.