School of Medicine

Bottles without original labels pose risk.With spring comes cleaning — the house, the yard, the basement and the car. And with cleaning comes potential hazards. People use them every day, but if common cleaners and pesticides are stored or applied incorrectly, they can have fatal consequences, say experts in environmental safety and emergency medicine at Washington University in St. Louis. More…

A study of how the brain of a premature infant responds to injury has found vulnerabilities similar to those in the mature brain but also identified at least one significant difference, according to neuroscientists and neonatologists at the School of Medicine.

Developing brain tumors can coax assistance from nearby cells known as microglia, according to a new study from scientists at the School of Medicine. The researchers have identified one protein made by microglia that helps accelerate tumor growth and are looking for others.

Photo by Kenneth WalshSchool of Medicine students rehearse for their spring musical, “Damn Yankees,” which will be held at 8 p.m. April 13-14 and 20-21 at Moore Auditorium in the North Building at 520 S. Euclid Ave.

The “New I-64” construction will come close to home as contractors prepare to pave temporary traffic lanes and install temporary signals on Kingshighway Boulevard.

A physical therapy doctoral student from New Orleans takes her classmates home for spring break to help the city rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.

An international consortium of researchers, including scientists at the Genome Sequencing Center, has decoded the genome of the rhesus macaque monkey and compared it with the genomes of humans and their closest living relatives – the chimps – revealing that the three primate species share about 93 percent of the same DNA. Washington University scientists also recently completed the raw sequences for the orangutan and marmoset genomes.

Scientists have untangled two similar disabilities that often afflict stroke patients, in the process revealing that one may be treatable with drugs for Parkinson’s disease. Researchers at the School of Medicine showed that stroke damage in a brain region known as the putamen is strongly linked to motor neglect, a condition that makes patients slow to move toward the left side.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • ADHD risk factors (week of Apr. 4) • Fixing flat feet (week of Apr. 11) • Nanoparticle tracking system (week of Apr. 18) • DHA and Alzheimer’s (week of Apr. 25)

Clubfoot, one of the most common birth defects, affects 1 in 1,000 children.Children can be sensitive to any physical difference they have from other children. But the patients that Christina Gurnett studies are not just worried about having big ears, eyeglasses or braces. Her patients have more emotionally devastating musculoskeletal disorders, including hands with more or less than five fingers, clubfoot and scoliosis. Since the cause of these disorders and others like them is unknown, Gurnett is examining the possible genetic causes of these common disorders, which run in families.