Two drugs commonly used to treat inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis did not shorten recovery time for patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 but did reduce the likelihood of death when compared with standard care alone, according to a national study led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Now that the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has ended, scientists are looking at ways to surveil indoor environments in real time for viruses. By combining recent advances in aerosol sampling technology and an ultrasensitive biosensing technique, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have created a real-time monitor that can detect any of the SARS-CoV-2 virus variants in a room in about 5 minutes.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions is likely to encourage more lawsuits against other race-conscious policies, including in employment, says an employment law expert at Washington University in St. Louis.“A majority of the court has clearly expressed a general antipathy to explicitly race-based policies that are intended to improve equity,” said Pauline Kim, the Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law.
One of humankind’s most precious fertilizers is slipping away. Phosphorus, which today comes mostly from nonrenewable reserves of phosphate rock, typically winds up in municipal waste streams. In the best cases, wastewater treatment plants sequester about 90% of that phosphorus in “sludge” and decompose that sludge into something known as digestate.
A study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis reveals that household and community poverty may influence brain health in children. Childhood obesity and lower cognitive function may explain, at least partially, poverty’s influence on the brain.
A sense of purpose in life — whether it’s a high-minded quest to make a difference or a simple hobby with personal meaning — can offer potent protection against loneliness, according to a new study co-authored by Patrick Hill, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
Smoke from forest fires in Canada cast a pall over St. Louis this month as well as other parts of the Midwest and the East Coast. New radar remote sensing technology can help reduce the amount of time it takes to produce a useful map of burned areas, helping emergency managers to respond to the threat of flash flooding after fires.
Pulse oximeters were a critical part of life-saving care during the COVID-19 pandemic, shaping treatment by measuring oxygen levels in the blood. The devices, which became common in the 1980s, have long shaped protocols for detecting hypoxemia, low blood oxygenation that can lead to organ failure and death.
On June 13, the Federal Reserve released updated inflation figures showing that the Consumer Price Index grew at a 4% annual rate in May. The difference in consumer prices from April to May, however, was just 0.1%. These two numbers paint very different pictures of the current state of inflation and the American economy.The confusion comes from the way in which we calculate inflation, according to John Horn, a professor of practice in economics at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St.
Physicists at Washington University are finding new ways to harness the quantum power of defects in otherwise flawless crystals.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed an approach that could help doctors distinguish between the many subtypes of limb girdle muscular dystrophy, a rare, genetic muscle disease. With new therapies poised to enter the clinic, identifying the precise subtype is necessary to ensure that people get access to the treatment most likely to benefit them.
Alzheimer’s disease causes changes to the brain that begin two decades or more before symptoms appear. A study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis reveals that the bacteria that live in the gut also change before Alzheimer’s symptoms arise, a discovery that could lead to diagnostics or treatments for Alzheimer’s disease that target the gut microbiome.
A new acoustic microfluidic method offers opportunities to conduct experiments with swimming cells and microorganisms. With it, ultrasonic waves like those used for imaging are able to hold a cell’s body in place without affecting the way it swims.
A new study in mice, led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, explains how prostate cancer senses a drop in testosterone levels due to common anti-hormone therapy and then begins making cholesterol — a necessary precursor to testosterone — to generate its own testosterone to fuel tumor growth. The study also points to a possible drug combination that may stop the cancer from feeding its own growth.
Matthew Lew, an associate professor of electrical and systems engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a five-year $2 million Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support his ongoing work to improve microscopic imaging techniques.
The myriad ways in which we use social media can be grouped into four broad categories, each of which is associated with a cluster of specific personality and behavioral traits, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis. Study authors say: Social media is here to stay, so clarifying how people use social media and raising awareness of these findings are crucial first steps toward ultimately helping people understand how they can avoid the negative aspects of social networking and engage in healthier social media usage.
New Olin Business School research demonstrates the effectiveness of partisan cues in a COVID-19 vaccination video ad campaign.A large-scale study to see if politically partisan cues can induce people to get COVID-19 vaccines found that, yes, they can.
Tumors are composed of rapidly multiplying cancer cells. Understanding which biochemical processes fuel their relentless growth can provide hints at therapeutic targets. Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have developed a technology to study tumor growth in another dimension — literally. The scientists established a new method to watch what nutrients are used at which rates spatially throughout a tissue.
People who endure the daily hassles of big cities often romanticize life in the country. But rural living is not necessarily the carefree, idyllic experience that many people imagine, said Emily Willroth, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Willroth co-authored a study in the Journal of Personality suggesting that people in rural areas face unique challenges that may shape their personalities and psychological well-being.
Plastics transformed engineering in the past century, but they also transformed the environment in ways that will take millennia to repair. Washington University in St. Louis is leading a new effort to address the grand challenge of developing the next generation of high-performance, sustainably sourced and biodegradable plastics that advance engineering while also protecting the environment.
Some animals preserve energy and heat by going into torpor, during which body temperature and metabolic rate drop, similar to hibernation. WashU researchers have safely and noninvasively induced such a state in mice and rats using ultrasound. Their work could help people with health conditions and astronauts.
New research from Washington University in St. Louis is among the first to provide concrete evidence that paternity leave policies can lead to more gender-equal attitudes — especially among those directly impacted by the policy.
In suburban backyards and at family picnic gatherings across the United States, mosquitoes are a common pest. People are most likely to get bitten by mosquitoes during the warm and lazy summer months, says Katie Westby, vector and disease ecologist at Tyson Research Center, Washington University in St. Louis’ environmental field station in Eureka, Mo.
Biologists from Washington University in St. Louis collaborated with a large number of butterfly and plant specialists to reconstruct the origin and global spread of butterflies. Working with researchers from dozens of countries, Michael Landis and Mariana P. Braga in Arts & Sciences helped create the world’s largest butterfly tree of life, assembled with DNA from more than 2,000 species representing all butterfly families.
Impairments in the lymphatic system may contribute to brain diseases, such as neurodegenerative diseases and stroke. Researchers have found a noninvasive and nonpharmaceutical method to influence glymphatic transport using focused ultrasound, opening the opportunity to use the method to further study brain diseases and brain function.
Repeated mammograms contain data on changes in breast density over time that could help identify women at high risk of breast cancer and even reveal which breast is likely to be affected, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified four important signs and symptoms that signal an elevated risk of early-onset colorectal cancer. The incidence of colorectal cancer is rising in people under 50, making it important to recognize such signs.
A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that some dangerous bloodstream infections in premature infants may be caused by strains of bacteria already lurking in their gut microbiomes.
Strategies to treat pain without triggering dangerous side effects such as euphoria and addiction have proven elusive. Now scientists at Washington University School of Medicine have identified a potential pathway to pain relief that neither triggers addiction nor causes hallucinations.
Stress causes the levels of Alzheimer's proteins to rise in females' brains but not males' brains, according to a new study in mice by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. This difference may contribute to women's greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
Scientists have long been intrigued by the remarkable properties of spider silk, which is stronger than steel yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. Now engineers have made a significant breakthrough in the fabrication of synthetic spider silk, paving the way for a new era of sustainable clothing production.
Two doses of an FDA-approved sleeping pill reduced levels of Alzheimer’s proteins in a small study of healthy volunteers led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study hints at the potential of sleep medications to slow or stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, although much more work needs to be done to confirm the viability of such an approach.
A new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis reveals that a connection between the body and mind is built into the structure of the brain. The study shows that parts of the brain area that controls movement are plugged into networks involved in thinking and planning, and in control of involuntary bodily functions such as blood pressure and heart rate.
An international phase 3 clinical trial led by physicians at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown that the investigational drug motixafortide — when combined with the standard therapy for mobilizing stem cells — significantly increases the number of stem cells that can be harvested, compared with treatment with the standard agent alone.
New research from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis has found that cancer cells can sense a layer of cells beneath the top collagen layer on which they normally travel, while normal cells cannot.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found a creative way to make a vaccine for norovirus, the leading cause of foodborne infections, by piggybacking on rotavirus, an unrelated virus for which there are already several highly effective vaccines.
Plants are capable of responding to people and have behaviors comparable to tameness, according to authors of new research that calls for a reappraisal of the process of plant domestication, based on almost a decade of observations and experiments.
How can the United States, one of the wealthiest nations on earth, have the highest rates of poverty among industrialized nations? In a new book based on decades of research, renowned poverty expert Mark Rank, a professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, develops a unique perspective for understanding this puzzle.
New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that transposable elements in various cancers potentially may be used to direct novel immunotherapies to tumors that don’t typically respond to immune-based treatments.
A heartbeat is a carefully coordinated series of electrical signals led by sodium ion channels, which tell the heart when to contract and to relax. Any disruption to these signals may lead to cardiac diseases such as an irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia. Two researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have taken a closer look at this process at the molecular level and have found what may provide new insights into different heart conditions and how to develop better therapies.
A study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that vaccinating people with updated boosters as new variants of the virus that cause COVID-19 emerge could shore up population immunity even as the virus mutates, and thereby prevent another deadly COVID-19 wave.
A new study from a Washington University researcher offers fresh insights into how the brain goes to great lengths to processes and remember everyday events.
Intrigued by reports of recent volcanic eruptions on Venus? WashU planetary scientists Paul Byrne and Rebecca Hahn want you to use their new map of 85,000 volcanoes on Venus to help locate the next active lava flow.
New research led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis identifies a common genetic signature that may increase a person's risk of developing substance use disorders. The work eventually could lead to universal therapies to treat multiple substance use disorders and potentially help people diagnosed with more than one.
Influenza viruses have an enormous impact in the U.S., with an estimated 25 million illnesses and 18,000 deaths in the 2022-23 flu season alone. However, the majority of virus particles are not infectious or are only partially infectious. How, then, do they become such a contagious and deadly virus?
Hummingbirds have the fastest metabolism of any animal. The tropical hummingbirds that live in the Andes Mountains in South America must expend considerable energy to maintain their high body temperatures in cold environments. One tool that they use to survive cold nights is called torpor, a hibernation-like state that allows them to ramp down energy consumption to well below what they normally use during the day.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed new imaging technology that can produce 3D maps showing the magnitude and distribution of uterine contractions in real time and across the entire surface of the uterus during labor.
For most people, getting burrs stuck to your clothes during a hike is nothing more than a nuisance, something to pick off and throw out when you get home. But for scientists at the Center for Engineering MechanoBiology (CEMB), the hooks on these little hitchhikers are inspiring new suturing schemes for surgical reattachment of tendon to bone.
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