Health

Carolyn Eberly Blaney, a loyal West Virginia University alumna who carried on a longstanding family tradition of philanthropy, passed away Friday (May 8) at the age of 96.

Breastfeeding may “rewire” babies’ brains in ways that help them acquire language, suggests a new study from the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute. Using MRI, the researchers scanned the brains of 4-to-8-year-old children and surveyed their parents about their breastfeeding history. They found that the longer a baby was breastfed, the more white matter he or she developed in language-associated parts of the brain.

Envisioning a return of students to its three campuses in the fall, the West Virginia University Board of Governors announced Friday (May 1) that base tuition and fees will remain unchanged for the academic year beginning in August.

Anticipating and meeting patients’ needs can take an emotional toll on nurses, even without COVID-19 as an added stressor. A new study led by Marian Reven, a Ph.D. student in the WVU School of Nursing and a registered nurse with WVU Medicine, suggests aromatherapy may reduce nurses’ feelings of stress, anxiety and fatigue on the job.

The West Virginia University School of Public Health and the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Bureau for Public Health are partnering on an initiative to recruit participants for a newly developed online course, Contact Tracing for COVID-19.

When COVID-19 started depleting stockpiles of medical gear in hotspots like New York and New Jersey, the West Virginia National Guard took notice – and reached out to experts at the John Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University to help prevent that from happening in the Mountain State.

President Gordon Gee sent a letter Thursday (April 23) to the West Virginia University campus community calling on Mountaineers to “stay the course and take pride in knowing that we are adapting in ways we never thought possible.”

The WVCTSI’s COVID-19 registry, created by Dr. Sally Hodder and Wes Kimble, contains more than 7,500 negative cases and 450 positives from individuals tested through the WVU Medicine system.

WVU Medicine pediatric and adult allergist and immunologist Brian Peppers, D.O., Ph.D., has received Investigational New Drug approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the experimental treatment of COVID-19 using convalescent donor plasma. This is the first FDA approved Investigational New Drug trial for COVID-19 immunotherapy to include pediatric patients.

When the director of West Virginia University’s Innovation Hub heard about a massive mask making effort underway next door at the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resource and Design, he knew engineers in the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Natural Resources could help.