pediatrics

Researchers at the School of Medicine have received a five-year, $6.5 million grant to study the physiological underpinnings of developmental disabilities in children and to use the findings to search for novel ways to improve such children’s lives. The grant renews funding for the university’s Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC), which is directed by John N. Constantino, MD (left) and Bradley L. Schlaggar, MD, PhD.

Andrew J. White, MD, director of the Division of Pediatric Rheumatology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been named the James P. Keating, MD, Professor of Pediatrics. White also directs the pediatric residency program at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

Bacteria aren’t the only non-human invaders to colonize the gut shortly after a baby’s birth. Viruses also set up house there, according to new research led by Lori Holtz, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Charles A. Goldfarb, MD, has been appointed chief of pediatric orthopaedic surgery at Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis Children’s Hospital. A hand and wrist specialist, Goldfarb currently is a professor of orthopaedic surgery, co-chief of the department’s hand and wrist service and medical director of the Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Orthopedic Center in Chesterfield.

John N. Constantino, MD, the Blanche F. Ittelson Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the School of Medicine, has received the 2014 Irving Phillips Award for Prevention from the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

A new multi-institutional study that originated at the School of Medicine showed that giving monthly blood transfusions to young sickle cell anemia patients who already had experienced silent strokes reduced by 58 percent their risk of another stroke, silent or otherwise.

Children diagnosed with depression as preschoolers are likely to suffer from depression as school-age children and young adolescents, research shows. Depressed preschoolers were 2.5 times more likely to suffer from depression in later school years than children who were not depressed at very young ages, according to School of Medicine researchers.

Studying children with autism and their parents, researchers have found that when a child has autism, his or her parents are more likely to have autistic traits than parents who don’t have a child with an autism spectrum disorder, as measured by a survey used to identify such characteristics. Pictured is one of the study’s authors, John Constantino, MD.

Athletes with concussions aren’t allowed to compete again right away, and a Washington University concussion expert advises that children with concussions also may not be able to go back to the classroom right away. Pictured is an image of the brain.

A study is the first to identify a single gene that is associated with a significant number of cases of respiratory distress syndrome in babies born at or near full term.​ WUSTL pediatrician Jennifer A. Wambach is the study’s lead author. Findings will be published in the December issue of Pediatrics.