Paying tribute; Service honors Memory and Aging volunteers

By Gila Reckess

On Sunday, Sept. 17, the Memory and Aging Project held a memorial service to honor those who donated their brains for autopsy and other participants in the project. Faculty, students, participants and family members joined at the Salem-in-Ladue United Methodist Church for an emotional tribute to deceased loved ones and the research they helped advance.

Alzheimer's disease affects an estimated 4 million people in the United States, with roughly 39,000 diagnosed cases in the St. Louis area. There is no known cure for this disease, and post-mortem examination is the only way to diagnose patients with 100 percent certainty.

Founded in 1979, the St. Louis Memory and Aging Project is now part of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC). The center conducts long-term research on all forms of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, and follows both patients and healthy volunteers until death. Many arrange to donate their brains to the center for autopsy.

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The $20 million Pediatric Research Building, at the corner of Children's Place and Euclid Avenue, provides six floors of pediatric research laboratories.

Valve replacement benefits elderly

Many people of that age develop problems with their aortic valve, the "door" to the blood vessel that transports blood away from the heart. As a result, they are prone to fatal complications such as congestive heart failure, or sudden death.

Surgical replacement of the aortic valve is a relatively common procedure for younger patients. Physicians hesitate to recommend it for patients over 80, however. According to Thoralf M. Sundt III, M.D., many cardiologists fear that elderly individuals either will not survive surgery or that the trauma of surgery will degrade the patient's quality of life. Sundt is first author of the Circulation paper and an associate professor of surgery.

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Creative strategy catches hypertension early

By David Linzee

Health-care professionals have found a novel way to warn men who are unaware they have hypertension: checking blood pressure in obstetricians' waiting rooms.

Hypertension prematurely ages arteries and can lead to strokes, heart attacks and kidney failure, often without warning. "Recent surveys indicate that 50 million people in this country have hypertension, but only 12.5 million are being adequately treated," said Steven B. Miller, M.D., senior author of a paper in the September issue of American Journal of Hypertension. Miller is an associate professor of medicine at at the School of Medicine.

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Euclid becomes Ovid Online Oct. 1

The Bernard Becker Medical Library is changing the electronic tool used for searching and retrieving biomedical journal literature. The switch from Euclid to Ovid Online will start Oct. 1. Among the first to be affected are researchers and clinicians who have standing search strategies, such as SDI-Auto Alerts, that notify them via e-mail of new journal articles in their fields. Strategies will be carried over into the new system but changes made during October, such as adding or deleting an author name to a strategy, will not be saved.

The transition will be completed by Nov. 1. An article about Ovid Online, the new search engine, will appear in the Oct. 27 Record.

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