BioMed Radio - Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

Adults and teenagers with clinical depression don’t respond to rewards in a normal manner. Their moods are less enthusiastic, and... MORE»

BOYS AND GIRLS WITH MUTATIONS IN A GENE CALLED NF1 TEND TO DEVELOP TUMORS, AND THEY HAVE A SIGNIFICANT RISK OF DEVELOPING THEM ON THE OPTIC NERVE. BUT IT TURNS OUT THAT GIRLS ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO HAVE VISION PROBLEMS AS A RESULT OF THOSE TUMORS. NOW, RESEARCHERS AT WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE IN ST. LOUIS HAVE FOUND THAT THE FEMALE HORMONE ESTROGEN PLAYS A ROLE IN THAT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BOYS AND GIRLS BY REVVING UP IMMUNE CELLS THAT DAMAGE THE OPTIC NERVE, LEADING TO VISION LOSS. JIM DRYDEN HAS THE STORY…

Using MRIs, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified areas in the brains of children with Tourette’s syndrome that appear markedly different from the same areas in the brains of children who don’t have the neuropsychiatric disorder.

As part of the White House Brain Initiative, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received two grants to develop tools to map and activate pathways in the brain with light. With $3.8 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the researchers, with collaborators at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will study how light-sensitive proteins can be used to control specific brain circuits with the goal of understanding how the brain is wired to regulate behaviors, such as stress, anxiety and depression.

Treatment-resistant depression is a big problem for older adults. More than half of seniors with clinical depression don’t get relief from standard antidepressant medications. To address that problem, psychiatrists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are helming a multicenter study to evaluate the efficacy of supplementing current therapies with additional drugs, or changing medications altogether. The study will follow 1,500 people with depression from St. Louis and rural Missouri, Los Angeles, Western Pennsylvania, New York City, Toronto and rural Ontario. Study subjects will be 60 or older, and all will have failed to respond to treatment involving at least two antidepressants. Some subjects will take additional drugs during the study, and others will be switched to different medications. After treatment, the researchers will attempt to evaluate which types of patients respond best to specific treatment strategies.

Children with sickle cell disease frequently have painful episodes that can require hospitalization for a few days. Physicians want to treat those episodes quickly to eliminate pain and get a child back home and back to school as quickly as possible, and now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that using the drug methadone might eliminate the pain more quickly. Methadone frequently is used to treat cancer pain and is a well-known treatment for addiction. But it also may be useful treating the severe pain associated with sickle cell disease.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will play a major role in the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in U.S. history. The landmark study will follow the biological and behavioral development of more than 10,000 children, beginning when the kids are 9 to 10 years old. Scientists studying the adolescents will use advanced brain imaging, interviews and behavioral testing to see how childhood experiences can affect a child’s changing biology, brain development and, ultimately, social, behavioral, academic and health outcomes. If the researchers can get a better understanding of the relationships between such factors, they may be able to predict and prevent, or even reverse, potential problems in development.

Quitting smoking improves health and lowers odds of developing lung cancer. But a new study shows that even among smokers with a genetic predisposition to smoking heavily and developing young cancer at a young age, the benefits of quitting are significant. An international study led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Siteman Cancer Center indicates that in these high-risk smokers, quitting cuts lung cancer risk in half and delays the age at which the disease is diagnosed.

In search of genetic clues regarding autism spectrum disorder, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are launching a study focused on grandmothers. Autism has a strong genetic basis, and rates of the disorder may be higher in the grandchildren of women who had at least one child with an autism spectrum disorder than in the population as a whole. To test that hypothesis, the researchers plan to recruit a minimum of 500 grandmothers and soon-to-be grandmothers to complete questionnaires about their own children with autism, their other biological children and their biological grandchildren. The researchers want to better understand how to support families and help them understand the odds that some of their children may inherit the disorder.

A new study reveals that some eye specialists who receive money from pharmaceutical companies are more likely to use drugs promoted by those companies than similar drugs that are equally effective but less expensive. Although the data can’t confirm a cause and effect between money from industry and the prescribing habits of some physicians, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology that they have identified a “positive association between reported pharmaceutical payments and increased use” of drugs prescribed to treat several retinal problems.

Researchers have found how sensory nerve cells work together to transmit itch signals from the skin to the spinal cord, where neurons then carry those signals to the brain. Their discovery may explain why some people experience various types of itching, including chronic itching, and help scientists find ways to make some types of itching stop. The researchers report that by interfering with the activity of sensory neurons, they may be able to inhibit multiple types of itching.

Scientists’ understanding of the genetic roots of breast cancer is based largely on research conducted in women of European ancestry. But that knowledge does little to explain why African-American women with breast cancer are more likely to be diagnosed at younger ages and with more aggressive tumors than their white counterparts. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are launching a major study involving 600 African-American women with breast cancer to learn whether their genetic risks are influenced by the same gene mutations that affect white women or if their mutations are altogether different. Such information may lead to new ways to prevent or treat breast cancer in African-American women.

A program aimed at helping abused and neglected children and their families is improving short-term outcomes for kids and providing children with stable home environments as their cases move through the courts. The program is for children and families whose cases ended up in court. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that kids whose families received psychiatric help and educational support through the program have better-than-expected outcomes compared to kids comparably matched for level of risk whose cases went through the court system before the program was launched.

As young people reach adulthood, their preferences for sweet foods typically decline. But for people with obesity, new research suggests that the drop off may not be as steep and that the brain’s reward system is operating differently in obese people than in thinner people, which may play a role in this phenomenon.

With more U.S. states legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana use, the number of adults using the drug has increased. But a survey of more than 216,000 adolescents from all 50 states indicates the rates of marijuana use are falling among the young. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis examined data on drug use collected from young people and found that the number of adolescents who had problems related to marijuana declined by 24 percent between 2002 and 2013. Over the same period the number of kids reporting they used marijuana at all fell by 10 percent.

People who suffer itching with no clear cause may have defects in their immune systems that haven’t been recognized. In a small study of patients who struggle with itching but have no known cause, researchers from the Center for the Study of Itch at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis identified several immune system irregularities that may underlie the urge to scratch. The patients suffer from what doctors call chronic idiopathic pruritis. Studying blood samples and skin biopsies, the researchers have found some very unusual things in the immune systems of these patients.

There is news almost every day about the epidemic of opioid drug use in the United States. Some 65 percent of heroin users report that they used prescription opioids first and then made the switch to heroin. And current estimates are that 4-20 percent of all opioid pills prescribed in the United States actually are taken for nonmedical reasons. Now, an anesthesiologist and a surgeon at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are proposing ways to reduce the availability of opioid drugs by eliminating some of them from the pipeline. Among other things, they’re proposing that doctors prescribe fewer pills for patients after they undergo surgery and that pharmaceutical companies initiate turn-in programs for unused opioids.

State laws designed to help teens gradually ease into full driving privileges may have an unintended benefit: They appear to lower rates of teen alcohol consumption and binge drinking. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that in states with stricter graduated driver licensing laws, there not only is less drinking and driving among teens, there also is less total alcohol consumption by teenagers.

Going to the doctor can be a frightening experience for some kids, and a visit to the psychiatrist can be even more unnerving. So a Washington University psychiatrist has written a children’s book about what happens on a visit to the psychiatrist’s office and why some kids receive psychiatric care. The idea is to make the experience of going to the psychiatrist less stressful and to inform healthy children that getting psychiatric care isn’t all that different from visiting the pediatrician or the dentist.

Some cases of diabetes are caused by mutations to a single gene, In studies of such cases, a team of Washington University researchers has identified the way that those genetic mutations cause problems. Although most people with the genetic form of diabetes called Mature-Onset Diabetes of the Young 1, seem to have clinical symptoms that are very close to the symptoms that affect people with type 2 diabetes, these studies show that the underlying mechanisms are very different. Most treatments for type 2 diabetes are designed to excite insulin-secreting cells into making more insulin, but that’s not the problem in the genetic form of the disorder. The study finds that insulin-secreting cells are under stress in the genetic form of diabetes, and those treatments that work in type 2 diabetes can increase stress, eventually killing the cells. So the researchers say say their findings suggest that patients with that genetic form of diabetes may need a different type of therapy.

Diabetes-related vision loss most often is blamed on blood vessel damage in and around the retina, but new research indicates that much of that vision loss may result from nerve cell injury and probably begins long before any blood vessels are damaged. The findings — from scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis — may lead to new approaches to treating diabetes-related vision loss, called diabetic retinopathy, since many current treatments are aimed at damaged blood vessels.

Washington University researchers studying the interplay between depression and heart disease are studying whether dietary supplements called omega-3 fatty acids can be of benefit to people suffering from both ailments. Levels of omega-3 tend to be lower in the blood cells of heart patients and depressed patients. So the researchers attempted to improve symptoms of both depression and heart disease by treating the patients with the supplement. Their initial study found that depression did not improve with omega-3, but the researchers now report that the fatty acids did help some patients. They found that when a person had high blood levels of omega-3, that individual was more likely to respond to additional supplements of omega-3. The researchers now are conducting a study with higher levels of the supplements to see whether that might improve depression in heart patients.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received almost $12 million in grants to resume the landmark Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study (OHTS), which concluded that lowering pressure in the eye prevents or delays glaucoma in some patients at high risk for the disease. Washington University researchers led the original study 20 years ago and found that patients at the highest risk for glaucoma needed treatment with pressure-lowering drops. But the scientists also concluded that many with elevated pressure but no additional symptoms probably did not need treatment. Twenty years later, the same researchers are leading a follow-up study to see how their original conclusions have held up.

Some people need to lose a lot of weight to be healthy, but for many, diets haven’t worked and bariatric surgery seems too big a step. This population is the target of a newly approved, nonsurgical therapy being performed by Washington University physicians at Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital. The therapy involves placing special balloons into the stomach and inflating them to give patients the feeling of being full after eating small meals. The balloons are inserted with an endoscope that is guided into the stomach through the patient’s mouth. The strategy is a substitute for gastric bypass and other surgical procedures.

The phenomenon scientists call “delay discounting” can tell a lot about a person’s ability to set and attain goals. Some people are more likely to prefer smaller but immediate rewards rather than larger but delayed rewards. The tendency to prefer immediate rewards, even if they are smaller, has been linked to impulsive behavior, which is connected to problems such as substance abuse and addiction. Studying twins over a number of years, Washington University researchers have found that genetic factors underlie the preference for short-term rewards. The researchers also have identified genes linked to the brain’s serotonin and opioid systems as contributors to the preference for rewards now rather than later.

Building on wireless technology that has the potential to interfere with pain, scientists have developed flexible, implantable devices that can activate — and, in theory, block — pain signals in the body and spinal cord before those signals reach the brain. The researchers, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the implants may one day be used in different parts of the body to fight pain that doesn’t respond to other therapies.

The retina’s rods and cones allow us to see. But although scientists have an idea of what makes rods perform and flourish, they’ve been in the dark somewhat about what keeps cones working and thriving. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis believe they’re closer to the answer and that their findings may one day help preserve vision in patients with age-related macular degeneration and other retinal diseases.

A study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis may aid efforts to tailor smoking-cessation treatments to cigarette smokers, based on their DNA. The researchers are recruiting 720 smokers from the St. Louis area who want to kick the habit. Study participants will provide DNA samples, from saliva, that will be analyzed to identify genetic variations that influence smoking behavior, lung cancer risk and the effectiveness of smoking-cessation treatments.

Babies born prematurely face an increased risk of neurological and psychiatric problems that may be due to weakened connections in brain networks linked to attention, communication and the processing of emotions, new research shows. In presentations at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Cynthia Rogers, MD, a child psychiatrist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, reports that her team is zeroing in on differences in the brain's networks that may underlie problems such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety and autism spectrum disorders.

Methadone — long used to treat pain and addiction — can be lethal if it lingers too long in the body. People metabolize the drug differently, and researchers have not completely understood how a person’s genetic makeup influences how slowly or rapidly methadone is cleared. But new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has identified genetic subtypes in people that govern methadone clearance, findings that could help prevent some of the 5,000 methadone-related deaths that occur each year in the United States.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis recently reported they had discovered genetic evidence suggesting schizophrenia was not a single disease but a group of eight genetically distinct disorders, each with its own symptoms. Now, using advanced brain-imaging techniques, they’ve been able to match groups of patients to specific qualities in brain anatomy and function. The findings could represent another step toward improving diagnosis and treatment of the disorders commonly known as schizophrenia.

Building on a growing body of work that suggests dietary nitrate improves muscle performance in elite athletes, a team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that concentrated beet juice, which is high in nitrates, increases muscle power in patients who have heart failure. Because many of the activities of daily living are power-based — getting out of a chair, lifting groceries, climbing stairs — improving muscle power is important to quality of life for heart-failure patients.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are recruiting volunteers for a study comparing the potential health and longevity benefits of the Mediterranean diet with a typical American diet. The study’s aim is to determine whether health and longevity are influenced more by healthy eating or by weight loss. People tend to lose weight when they consume a Mediterranean diet, but it’s been hard to determine whether their markers of health and longevity improve because they’re eating healthier food or whether those changes are the result of weight loss.

Positive mentions on Twitter about hookah smoking may promote the assumption that it is less harmful than smoking cigarettes, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In recent years, hookah smoking has increased in popularity, particularly among young adults. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hookah smoking has many of the same harmful toxins as cigarettes and carries the same health risks. Yet, the researchers found that most of the 12,000 hookah-related tweets posted per day portray hookah smoking in a positive light.

Shedding light on possible contributors to autism, schizophrenia and other neuro-psychiatric disorders, Washington University researchers have found that a type of support cell in the brain, called an astrocyte, may play a role in the ability of neurons to communicate. The scientists found, in culture, that without astrocytes, communication between neurons is slowed.

Women who have gastric bypass surgery to lose weight should keep a close eye on their alcohol consumption, according to a study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Researchers found that changes in how alcohol is metabolized after surgery can speed its delivery into the bloodstream, resulting in earlier and higher peaks in blood-alcohol levels. The researchers said that although this study was conducted in women, they suspect the same changes may affect men.

Exercise and mindfulness often are associated with reduced stress. That can be good for a person’s heart and mood. Now Washington University researchers are leading an effort to learn whether those activities also might be good for one’s memory. The investigators are studying the effects of exercise and mindfulness training on cognitive function in adults over the age of 65. The researchers won’t be studying people with the sort of dementia associated with conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, but they hope to learn whether some combination of exercise, mindfulness training and lifestyle intervention might help prevent some of the cognitive problems thought to be a normal part of aging.

Babies born prematurely are at an increased risk for autism spectrum disorders, so researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis Children’s Hospital have been trying to determine whether it’s possible to identify which babies may go on to develop those problems. They assessed babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, looking for early signs that a child born prematurely might be at risk, but they found that the warning signs they would have expected — such as an avoidance of eye contact — didn’t actually predict autism spectrum disorders but instead were more prominent in babies who did not develop an autism spectrum disorder.

The amount of acid in a person’s urine, and small molecules related to diet, may help predict how likely it is that an individual will develop a urinary tract infection. Conventional wisdom in medicine has favored the idea that acidic urine should be better at restricting bacterial growth than less acidic urine. But Washington University School of Medicine researchers found that when a person’s urine was closer to the neutral pH value of pure water, it was better at restricting bacterial growth than more acidic samples were, meaning people with less acidic urine may be less likely to develop infections.

A team of Washington University vision researchers is the first to identify a specific type of cell in the eye that appears to be responsible for the ability to detect motion. Studying retinas in mice, the researchers identified a specific type of cell that transmits information when the retina detects moving objects. When something is moving in the visual field, those cells send signals to other cells that then transmit the information to the brain. Those signals can help mice avoid predators. For humans, understanding how those cells transmit signals may aid in the development of artificial retinas for people who cannot see.

A newly discovered link between bacteria and immune cells may be a significant contributor to inflammatory bowel disease, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Patients with HIV are not in immediate danger of death anymore. Instead, thanks to antiretroviral therapy, most relatively live normal lives for many years. However, the combination of HIV and the drugs used to treat it leads many HIV-positive patients to develop lipid problems, diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. The search for treatments to fight those complications has led researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to a drug that improves insulin sensitivity and lowers inflammation in people with HIV. The researchers believe long-term use of the drug, called sitagliptin, may help combat the metabolic problems that affect people with the virus.

Smokers with a specific genetic variation are more likely to keep smoking longer than those who don’t have the gene variant. They’re also more likely to be diagnosed with lung cancer at a younger age, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Antibiotic resistance is poised to spread rapidly around the globe among bacteria frequently implicated in respiratory and urinary infections, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Evaluating military personnel with traumatic brain injuries, Washington University School of Medicine researchers have found that early symptoms of post-traumatic stress, such as anxiety, sadness and irritability are the strongest predictors of later disability. The results were surprising because mental health more closely correlated with disability than assessments typically made after concussions, such as tests of memory, balance, coordination, and severity of headaches.

An investigational drug appears to cut the risk of severe asthma attacks in half for patients who have difficulty controlling the disorder with standard medications. That's according to a pair of multicenter clinical trials, headed by asthma researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The DNA of bacteria that live in the body can pass a trait to offspring in a way similar to the parents’ own DNA, a new mouse study suggests. According to the study’s authors, the discovery means scientists need to consider a significant new factor – microbial DNA– in their efforts to understand how genes influence illness and health.

Building on the work of the Human Connectome Project, which is identifying the neural pathways that underlie brain function and behavior, a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is aiming to identify how those pathways are different in people with psychiatric illnesses. Researchers are using high-resolution imaging tools to identify structural and functional connectivity patterns in the brains of patients with psychiatric disorders and then comparing those scans to others taken of the brains of people who don’t have the disorders. The idea is to see whether, and how, connectivity patterns change in the brains of people with those illnesses.

Enzymes linked to diabetes and obesity appear to play key roles in arthritis and leukemia, potentially opening up new avenues for treating these diverse diseases, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

A study in which more than 43,000 children were evaluated for head trauma offers an unprecedented picture of how children most frequently suffer head injuries, report physicians at Washington University School of Medicine and the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine.