School of Medicine

Even seasoned doctors have a difficult time diagnosing pneumonia in hospitalized patients breathing with the assistance of a ventilator. That’s because a patient’s underlying illness often skews laboratory test results and masks pneumonia’s symptoms. Now, researchers at the School of Medicine report they have validated the use of gene chip technology to rapidly and accurately detect pneumonia associated with ventilator use in hospitalized patients.

Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have made major headway in explaining a mechanism by which plant cells silence potentially harmful genes. A team led by Craig Pikaard, Ph.D., WUSTL professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, has published a paper this month in Cell, that explains how RNA polymerases work together to use the non-coding region of DNA to prevent destructive, virus-derived genes from being activated.

Photo by Ray MarklinThe Third Annual Research Training Symposium and Poster Session featured summer research projects performed by more than 100 junior faculty, fellows, residents and students.

School of Medicine researchers are studying a protein, TREM-2, that may be an important contributor to the disease.

For the first time, WUSTL scientists have decoded the complete DNA of a cancer patient and traced her disease to its genetic roots. The pioneering work sets the stage for using a more comprehensive, genome-wide approach to unravel the genetic basis of cancer.

School of Medicine scientists have determined that the same factors play key roles in three different diseases that can lead to blindness.

Multiple sclerosis results when the body’s own defense system attacks nerve fibers in the brain and spinal cord. Now scientists led by John Russell, Ph.D., at the School of Medicine have shown that interferon-gamma plays a deciding role in whether immune cells attack and injure the central nervous system in mice.

Scientists have shown for the first time that neuroprosthetic brain implants may be able to help stroke patients with partial paralysis. Researchers found that implants known as brain-computer interfaces (BCI) may be able to detect activity on one side of the brain that is linked to hand and arm movements on the same side of the body. They hope to use these signals to guide motorized assistance mechanisms that restore mobility in partially paralyzed limbs.

A test that reveals brain changes believed to be at the heart of Alzheimer’s disease has bolstered the theory that education can delay the onset of the dementia and cognitive decline that are characteristic of the disorder. Scientists at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the School of Medicine found that some study participants who appeared to have the brain plaques long associated with Alzheimer’s disease still received high scores on tests of their cognitive ability. Participants who did well on the tests were likely to have spent more years in school.

Mark Twain, a skeptic of the idea of free will, argues in his essay “What Is Man?” that humans do not command their minds or the opinions they form. Twain’s views get a boost this week from researchers at the School of Medicine and University of Chieti, Italy. In Nature Neuroscience, scientists report that a simple decision-making task does not involve the frontal lobes, where many of the higher aspects of human cognition, including self-awareness, are thought to originate.