A combination of two topical creams lowers the risk that patients will develop squamous cell carcinoma of the skin, according to new research at the School of Medicine. The combination already has been shown to clear precancerous skin lesions from sun-damaged skin.

Adult depression has long been associated with shrinkage of the hippocampus, a brain region that plays an important role in memory and response to stress. Now, new research from Washington University in St. Louis has linked participation in team sports to larger hippocampal volumes in children and less depression in boys ages 9 to 11.

A biomedical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis is developing a therapeutic option that would prevent opiates from crossing the blood-brain barrier, preventing the high abusers seek.

With a growing demand for mental health services at colleges, a research team led by the School of Medicine has received a $3.8 million grant to test a mental health phone app to treat depression, anxiety and eating disorders in a study involving some 8,000 students at 20 colleges, universities and community colleges.

The School of Medicine’s Rupa Patel, MD, and Anne Glowinski, MD, are working with a Bangladeshi organization to help deliver mental health care to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Patel also is gathering forensic evidence of violence the Rohingya suffered.

Pain researchers at the School of Medicine have shown in rodents that they can block receptors on brain cells that are responsible for the negative emotions associated with pain, such as sadness, depression and lethargy. The findings could lead to new, less addictive approaches to pain treatment.

School of Medicine researchers received $10.5 million from the Department of the Army to investigate whether an anti-seizure drug can prevent noise-induced hearing loss when given hours before exposure.

Researchers at the School of Medicine have found a compound that may treat inflammatory bowel disease without directly targeting inflammation. The compound tamps down the activity of a gene linked to blood clotting.

When very young children talk about wanting to commit suicide, conventional wisdom is that they don’t understand what they’re saying. But School of Medicine research has found that depressed children ages 4 to 6 who think and talk about committing suicide understand what it means to die better than other kids of the same age. They also are more likely to think of death as something caused by violence.

With the aid of a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health, School of Medicine researchers are studying why immunity elicited by the flu vaccine wanes so rapidly. The goal is a better, longer-lasting flu vaccine.