School of Medicine

Co-author of Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors, Alvin Poussaint, will present the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial lecture for the Assembly Series. The talk will be held at 4 p.m., on Tuesday, April 15 in the Laboratory Sciences Auditorium. Poussaint co-wrote Come on People with activist comedian Bill Cosby […]

An expert on race relations, prejudice and diversity issues in a multicultural society, Alvin Poussaint, M.D., will present the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture for the Assembly Series. The talk will be held at 4 p.m., Tuesday, April 15, in the Laboratory Sciences Auditorium on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis.

The ability of brain cells to take in substances from their surface is essential to the production of a key ingredient in Alzheimer’s brain plaques, neuroscientists at the School of Medicine have learned. The researchers used a drug to shut down the intake process, known as endocytosis, in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. The change led to a 70 percent drop in levels of amyloid beta, the protein fragment that clumps together to form Alzheimer’s plaques.

School of Medicine researchers have discovered the heart doesn’t slow down as quickly after exercise in patients taking highly active antiretroviral therapy for HIV.

At the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, the handwashing or foam-use compliance rate is much higher than average at nearly 80 percent and continues to rise.

Deanna M. Barch, Ph.D., takes over leadership of the Silvio Conte Center for Neuroscience Research.

Women over age 65 have a harder time preserving muscle than men of the same age, which probably affects their ability to stay strong and fit.

BarchThe Silvio Conte Center for Neuroscience Research at Washington University has a new director. Deanna Barch, associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences, of psychiatry and of radiology, takes over leadership of the center from John Csernansky, the former Gregory B. Couch Professor of Psychiatry, who has become the chairman of psychiatry at Northwestern University.

Heart surgeons at the School of Medicine report that by adding a simple 10-20 second step to an operative procedure they achieved a significant improvement in the outcome for the surgical treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF). The surgeons redirected wayward electrical impulses that cause AF by creating precisely placed scars, or ablations, in the heart muscle.

In the first comprehensive study of the genetic basis of psoriasis, researchers at the School of Medicine have discovered seven new sites of common DNA variation that increase the risk of the troublesome skin condition.