School of Medicine

He died Oct. 9 from complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; he taught radiology courses at the medical school from 1968-2001.

Researchers have developed a technique that provides a more carefully controlled radiation oncology dosages with less damage to nearby healthy tissues.

Researchers are working to identify these changes so that it might be possible to halt Alzheimer’s progress before people become severely impaired.

Photo by Bob BostonAward-winners Lee Epstein and Eugene M. Johnson Jr. greet each other at the recent Faculty Achievement Awards Ceremony.

Photo by Bob BostonDean Larry J. Shapiro welcomes Sen. Kit Bond, who was visiting the Medical Campus to discuss technology transfer.

Wayne M. Yokoyama, M.D., gives that advice to medical students and postdoctoral fellows aiming to become independent researchers. “Work hard, exceed people’s expectations and you’ll be successful,” he continues. “We are often limited most by constraints we place on ourselves.” That philosophy helped Yokoyama become a two-time Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, the Sam J. […]

Carol S. North was camping in rural Missouri with her two Great Danes on Sept. 11, 2001. Shortly after the hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, reporters started calling. Soon she had been tracked down and brought back to town. To understand why the media immediately went looking for North […]

School of Medicine researchers have published one of the first studies to track driving performance over time in older adults. More: Alzheimer’s research at WUSTL leads to better treatment of the disease.

A major factor contributing to Americans’ increasing body sizes appears to be increasing portion sizes.Obesity puts people at risk for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and cancer. It also decreases quality of life. But that’s not stopping Americans from eating and drinking more than ever before. Almost two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese, and a major factor contributing to increasing body sizes appears to be increasing portion sizes. Obesity researcher Samuel Klein, M.D., the Danforth Professor of Medicine and Nutritional Science at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, says the obesity epidemic continues to get worse in spite of a great deal of research about the dangers of being overweight and increasing numbers of people who are trying to lose weight. Part of the problem is that many people tend to eat what is put in front of them, and serving sizes are larger than ever before.

Patients in intensive care units are kept alive with breathing machines, dialysis, tube feeding and other extraordinary measures until their bodies can begin to recover from critical illness or traumatic injury.Sepsis, sometimes called blood poisoning, is the leading cause of death among critically ill patients in the United States. For many years, scientists believed it was the result of an uncontrolled inflammatory response, but several studies that involved anti-inflammatory drugs were not successful at improving survival. Now, a research team led by Richard S. Hotchkiss, M.D., professor of anesthesiology and of medicine and associate professor of surgery and of molecular biology and pharmacology, and Irene E. Karl, Ph.D., research professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that how immune cells die in sepsis might be a key to whether patients survive. When immune cells die through a process known as programmed cell death, or apoptosis, a patient’s chance of survival appears to be much lower than if cells die through a different mechanism called necrosis.