Show Me the Science

In this episode, Washington University researchers discuss the Food and Drug Administration's recent full approval of the drug Leqembi (lecanemab) and what it could mean to the future of Alzheimer's disease treatments. The drug is approved for use in people with mild dementia from Alzheimer's disease, but researchers at Washington University's Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer Disease Researc...

In this episode, we discuss new research into psychedelic drugs as potential therapies for psychiatric illness. Several studies have suggested that drugs, such as psilocybin, may be useful in treating problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and depression. Psychiatry researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have been using a brain-imaging technique ca...

In this episode, we hear from two physician-scientists who have been leaders in the U.S. effort to deal with two medical crises that emerged almost 40 years apart: HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. Anthony S. Fauci, MD, the recently retired director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spoke to Washington University School of Medicine's 202...

In this episode, we visit a recent event sponsored by the Becker Medical Library at the School of Medicine. Called "In Our Words: Connection," the storytelling event brought together 12 faculty members, medical students, residents and fellows who told stories about how their lives have been affected by medicine as caregivers, those receiving care or otherwise. The idea behind the evening was to sh...

In this episode, we report on the disturbing spike in maternal mortality rates in recent years. Although rates of maternal death have long been higher in the U.S. than in other wealthy countries, the rate recently reached its highest level since 1965. The number of deaths of mothers has risen from 17.4 deaths per 100,000 births in 2018 to 20.1 deaths in 2019 and 23.8 in 2020 — the first year of th...

In this episode, we report on a major international study involving psychiatry researchers from the School of Medicine who are working to identify causes and effects of the early stages of schizophrenia in young people — an illness characterized by significant changes in thoughts, feelings and behavior that may include a loss of contact with reality. The goal is to improve early diagnosis and trea...

In this episode, we head to the emergency department . Doctors in most emergency departments around the country are dealing with fewer COVID-19-positive patients than before, but they continue to be faced with a different epidemic of sorts: the 20% to 30% of patients with dementia-related cognitive issues who seek emergency care. As the U.S. population ages, it's more common for emergency physicia...

In this episode, we learn more about one of the leading problems associated with long COVID-19. Those who have been infected with the virus are at increased risk for a range of neurological conditions in the first year after an infection. Research conducted at the School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System has found that strokes, cognitive and memory problems, depress...

In this episode, we visit the team at the Washington University Living Well Center . It was launched to improve outcomes for patients with orthopedic issues. For example, if someone needs hip-replacement surgery, that person also can receive help losing weight, stopping smoking and taking other actions to make it more likely the outcome from their surgery will be as good as possible. The center us...

As we get deeper into autumn and winter approaches, we discuss COVID-19 vaccines. New boosters have been developed to rev up the immune system not only to fight the original strain of the virus but also to boost the immune system against more recent omicron strains of SARS-CoV-2. In this episode, we discuss the boosters — now approved for use in children as young as 5 — with infectious diseases sp...

If you were coughing, running a fever and felt short of breath, what would you think? Those are common symptoms of COVID-19. But not everyone with such symptoms is infected with the virus. In this episode, we tell the story of a Michael Moffitt, a young man who grew up in St. Louis but was been working in the oil and gas fields of New Mexico. He got sick in November 2020 with a cough, fever and sh...

Infections and hospitalizations are rising again. During this latest wave of COVID-19 infections, many fully vaccinated people are getting sick, as are people who previously were sick with the virus, even those infected in the very recent past. The new strains of omicron — BA.4 and BA.5 — have stricken some well-known, fully vaccinated people, including President Joe Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci. I...

Brain-computer interfaces connect activity in the brain to an external device by means of a computer. Research has shown it's possible to use such interfaces to move robotic arms and perform other tasks. Almost 30 years ago, Washington University researcher Eric Leuthardt, MD , a professor of neurosurgery, demonstrated that he could hook electrodes to the brains of epilepsy patients who were waiti...

As many as 30% of those who get COVID-19 will continue to have problems in the weeks and months after their infections. Long COVID-19 is defined as a condition in which issues persist for at least three months. But for many, the difficulties last much longer. Extreme fatigue, shortness of breath and what many call brain fog lead the list of long-term complications. Some people also develop heart p...

In this episode, we discuss issues that were problems long before anyone ever heard of COVID-19: alcohol use disorder and opioid overdose. Both seem to have gotten worse during the pandemic. Alcohol sales rose during the early days of lockdown, and they've remained high. Laura J. Bierut, MD , the Alumni Endowed Professor of Psychiatry, says another issue is that with some people losing their jobs...

But for this episode, we're sticking with COVID-19. In 2020, when the pandemic shut down much of the country, our very first guest on "Show Me the Science" was Steven J. Lawrence, MD , a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases. He also was our first guest of our second season of podcast episodes last year. And we've brought him back again, for year three. As the pandemic first...

The death toll isn't the only staggering statistic from the first two years of the pandemic. What's become increasing clear is that some COVID-19 patients don't get well right away. Since the earliest days of the pandemic, we've heard of survivors who continue to experience shortness of breath, extreme fatigue, lingering difficulty with taste and smell, and brain fog. But researchers at Washington...

With the pandemic death toll approaching 1 million people in the United States, Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and a Washington University alum, visited Washington University School of Medicine on March 2 and March 3, 2022. As part of the Department of Medicine's weekly Grand Rounds series, she sat down with William G. Powderly,...

More than 900,000 people in the United States have died of COVID-19, and over the last year, almost all of those deaths have been among unvaccinated people. Still, many people remain unvaccinated, and many say they are not sure whether they can trust the things public health officials say about COVID vaccines. Washington University infectious diseases specialist Elvin H. Geng, MD , a professor of...

With U.S. hospitals crowded with COVID-19 patients for almost two years, the pandemic's relentlessness has pushed many doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals to the brink. Many have decided to leave the field or question whether to remain. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have launched a research project as part of a new program funded by the Health...

The omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 arrived in the United States around Thanksgiving. Within a few weeks, it was the dominant variant in the country, and hospitals suddenly were crowded with COVID-19 patients again. More patients were hospitalized in the St. Louis region as the omicron wave hit than at any other time during the pandemic. The good news is that although there have been breakthrough in...

When SARS-CoV-2 first arrived, it was as if a raging wildfire had been blown by a strong wind through dry, flammable timber. So says Ali Ellebedy, PhD , an immunologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. As a population, he says, we were completely vulnerable to the virus because no one's immune system had seen it before. In the two years since the virus first appeared, mill...

Although there seems to be evidence that infections with the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 are somewhat milder, you wouldn't know that from the number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital. A post-holiday spike in cases has seen the number of inpatients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis Children's Hospital rise to levels higher than any seen since the pandemic began. In this episode, a pair o...

The omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is here, but it's the delta variant that has been driving a rapid increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations in recent weeks as people get out into the world more, antibody responses from vaccines wane, and families travel and gather in larger groups. As cases surge and hospitalizations increase, health-care workers are facing a second holiday season with emergency roo...

A few weeks ago, no one had heard of the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. Since its recent discovery by scientists in South Africa, infections with the variant have been found in dozens of U.S. states and countries around the world. Scientists are scrambling to understand whether the new variant, which houses several mutations on the spike protein that infects cells, might be able to evade protectio...