The flight of over 900,000 Muslim refugees from Rohingya to Bangladesh since August 2017 has resulted in the largest single refugee camp in the world. The Rohingya deal with constant violence as well as stressors related to living in the camps, including disease; lack of food, water and sanitation; and lack of essential services like […]
A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests Zika may not be unique in its ability to cause miscarriages and birth defects. Two viruses closely related to Zika – West Nile and Powassan – can spread from an infected pregnant mouse to her fetuses, causing brain damage and fetal death. […]
More than one million people in tropical countries contract the parasite Leishmaniaevery year through the bites of infected sand flies. Most people develop disfiguring – but not life-threatening – skin lesions at the sites of the bites. But if the parasite spreads to the internal organs, it causes a disease known as visceral leishmaniasis, which kills […]
Prions are protein aggregates that can be transmitted between cells and are associated with human diseases including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and in neurodegeneration as observed in ALS. Despite the important role of prion-like domains in human diseases, much about them remains a mystery. An international team of researchers, including Rohit Pappu, the Edwin H. Murty Professor […]
Scientist honored for role in founding, leading field of gut microbiome research Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, a world-renowned scientist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur International Award. The award recognizes scientists who have made outstanding contributions to biomedical research in fields that profoundly affect global public health. […]
Research led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to issue new guidelines for treating lymphatic filariasis – a devastating tropical disease that can cause elephantiasis. An estimated 70 million people worldwide are infected with the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes. It can cause massive […]
Sebastian Nasamu, an MD/PhD student at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, battled successive bouts of malaria as a child growing up in Ghana. He survived – and has committed himself to eradicating the disease. Now Nasamu, Daniel Goldberg, MD, PhD, and colleagues have identified two crucial enzymes in the malarial parasite’s arsenal: […]
Malnutrition can be traced to poor-quality diets lacking in diversity, a recent phenomenon in evolutionary history, according to a new paper from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. The paper posits that a misalignment of modern diets and the genome has developed over time. They write that ultra-processed foods, particularly oils, flours, […]
Lauren Cubellis, a PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology in Arts & Sciences, received a 2017-18 DAAD Long-Term Research Grant for Doctoral Dissertation Research and a 2017-18 DAAD Intensive Language Course Grant, Goethe Institute. DAAD is the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst). Cubellis will conduct dissertation fieldwork in Berlin with clinicians and peer specialists […]
European government policies regarding families and work are very different than those of the U.S. WashU sociologist Caitlyn Collins became interested in these differences, and as a graduate student, began interviewing European working moms to learn firsthand how they felt about these policies and what their effects were on family life. What she found was […]