School of Medicine

A group of pregnant women who have asthma or allergies will get extra vitamin D as part of a study to determine if the vitamin can prevent their children from developing asthma.

Chronic sleep deprivation in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease makes Alzheimer’s brain plaques appear earlier and more often, researchers at the School of Medicine report online this week in Science Express.

The age at which a person takes a first drink may influence genes linked to alcoholism, making the youngest drinkers the most susceptible to severe problems.

PaciorkowskiResearchers at the School of Medicine and the University of Chicago have launched what is believed to be the first worldwide, online registry of children with infantile spasms, a severe type of epilepsy that affects babies in the first few months of life.

An international team of scientists has identified two more genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. The findings are reported in the online edition of the journal Nature Genetics.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) will host a regional meeting on Genomics and the Future of Medicine from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Sept. 10 in the Eric P. Newman Education Center at the School of Medicine.

MurrayDavid J. Murray has been appointed as chief of the Division of Pediatric Anesthesiology at the School of Medicine. Murray, the Carol B. and Jerome T. Loeb Professor and head of medical simulation at the School of Medicine, also becomes anesthesiologist-in-chief at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

New findings from nutrition researchers at the School of Medicine suggest that it’s not whether body fat is stored in the belly that affects metabolic risk factors for diabetes, high blood triglycerides and cardiovascular disease, but whether it collects in the liver. They report online in the journal PNAS Early Edition that when fat collects in the liver, people experience serious metabolic problems such as insulin resistance, which affects the body’s ability to metabolize sugar.

Low levels of vitamin D are known to nearly double the risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes, and now researchers at the School of Medicine think they know why. They have found that diabetics deficient in vitamin D can’t process cholesterol normally, so it builds up in their blood vessels, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke.

When estrogen-lowering drugs no longer control metastatic breast cancer, the opposite strategy might work. Raising estrogen levels benefited 30 percent of women whose metastatic breast cancer no longer responded to standard anti-estrogen treatment, according to research conducted at the School of Medicine and collaborating institutions.