School of Medicine

The May Department Stores Foundation and Edward Jones each have pledged $1 million toward the Emerson-Busch challenge grant. The challenge grant, a $10-million gift from Emerson’s Charitable Trust and the Anheuser-Busch Foundation, will help ensure that people in the St. Louis area have access to the most advanced cancer treatments.

DaceyRalph G. Dacey Jr., M.D., the Henry G. and Edith R. Schwartz Professor and Chairman of Neurological Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and neurosurgeon-in-chief at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, has been named chairman of the American Board of Neurological Surgery.

Washington University, St. Louis Children’s Hospital, and Barnes-Jewish Hospital have teamed with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to host the first live Virtual Patient Education Day for people with cystic fibrosis (CF). The live Web cast, CF Nutrition: News You Can Use, outlines the importance of strong nutrition for people with CF.

Growing new organs to take the place of damaged or diseased ones is moving from science fiction to reality, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Scientists have previously shown that embryonic tissue transplants can be used to grow new kidneys inside rats. In their latest study, though, they put the new kidneys to an unprecedented and critical test, removing the rat’s original kidneys and placing the new kidneys in position to take over for them. The new kidneys were able to successfully sustain the rats for a short time.

GandhiPediatric cardiothoracic surgeon Sanjiv K. Gandhi, M.D., will join the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis Children’s Hospital in September 2004. Gandhi’s appointment is part of the Medical Center’s effort to ensure the pediatric heart and lung services, collectively called cardiothoracic services, are among the nation’s best.

Liposuction is no substitute for dieting when it comes to preventing diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, the Washington University team found that removing abdominal fat by using modern liposuction techniques did not provide the metabolic benefits normally associated with similar amounts of fat loss induced by dieting.

When a major branch of the mouse immune system is disabled, a normally harmless virus can rapidly mutate into a lethal one, according to WUSM researchers. These findings may help clinicians better understand how otherwise harmless viruses can cause severe disease among patients with weakened or suppressed immune systems.

Photo courtesy of Alzheimer’s Association, St. Louis ChapterA WUSTL psychologist says there is little consensus among doctors when it comes to disclosing a dementia diagnosis to patients and their caregivers.To tell or not to tell, that is the question. Should Alzheimer’s disease patients be told of the diagnosis? If so, when, how and by whom? Brian D. Carpenter, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, conducted a review of related study literature that shows there is little consensus among clinicians on the issue of disclosing a dementia diagnosis and great room for much more research. Carpenter’s review, done with research assistant Jennifer Dave, was published in the April 2004 issue of The Gerontologist. “If contemporary debate and practice are any indication, there is no consensus on these matters,” Carpenter says in the article “Disclosing a Dementia Diagnosis: A Review of Opinion and Practice, and a Proposed Research Agenda.”

That’s using your brain. For the first time in humans, a team headed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis has placed an electronic grid atop patients’ brains to gather motor signals that enable patients to play a computer game using only the signals from their brains.

In this micrograph of a neuron, green dye highlights proteins linked to nerve cell damage and death during stroke.Brain cells in danger of exciting other nearby brain cells to death may be able to close temporarily, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Scientists simulated stroke-like conditions in cultured rat brain cells that use glutamate, an excitatory chemical messenger linked to nerve damage and death during strokes. But when they created those conditions, the researchers found that glutamate transmission was suppressed in what may be an attempt by neurons to limit the damage caused by catastrophic events such as strokes.