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By Robert Strenge and Cherie Winner, Washington State Magazine

Contact: Robert Strenge, WSU News Services, rstrenge@wsu.edu, 509/335-3583; or Cherie Winner, Washington State Magazine,cwinner@wsu.edu 509/335-4486

Happy--and healthy--ever after

"In sickness or in health . . ."

That noble sentiment of the traditional marriage vow says your spouse promises to stick with you if you get sick. What it doesn't say, and what a study by Washington State University psychologist John Ruiz and researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University now shows, is that your spouse's personality can help you heal--or speed your demise.

And, in the happiest of endings, being satisfied with your partner, no matter what his or her personality, is like an inoculation against all the bad things wrought by depression and anxiety.

Read the full story from Washington State Magazine.

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• WSU Spokane Clinical Research Team Selected for Two New Diabetes Trials

  SPOKANE, Wash. – Patient recruitment is underway for two diabetes-related clinical trials to be conducted through the College of Pharmacy at Washington State University Spokane. One is sponsored by Duke and Oxford universities, while the other was developed by the Population Health Research Institute in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and offered to WSU through the University of Washington. It will develop data on whether the medication Januvia® makes a difference in cardiovascular outcomes in diabetic patients. Funded by Merck Inc., the trial will involve study sites in 33 countries and follow 14,000 patients for at least three years.

• Eat, Sleep, Stay Warm: How Our Bodies Find the Balance

  PULLMAN, Wash. –A new study led by scientists at Washington State University shows that alternate products of a single gene help control whether an animal sleeps or stays awake, craves food or doesn’t, and maintains its body temperature or plunges deep into hypothermia.

• Sleep Researchers Receive Air Force Grant to Model Cognitive Fatigue

  SPOKANE, WASH. - Researchers from the Sleep and Performance Research Center at Washington State University Spokane have been awarded a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to develop a computational model predicting the precise effects of fatigue on cognitive performance tasks.

• WSU Veterinary Cardiologist Discovers Gene for Heart Disease

  PULLMAN, Wash.—Washington State University veterinary cardiologist Kathryn M. Meurs has discovered a mutant gene in the Boxer breed that causes a type of heart disease that can be fatal in animals and humans. Well known in the Boxer breed community, the disease is called Boxer cardiomyopathy. The more formal term is arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy or ARVC.

• Washington State University Researchers Awarded $1.4M for Driver Fatigue Studies

  SPOKANE, Wash. – The Sleep and Performance Research Center at Washington State University Spokane has received a competitively awarded $1.4 million contract from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Office of Research to investigate the relationships between work hours in the transportation sector and drivers’ sleep, performance and health.

• Better Tests Needed to Pinpoint Memory Problems, Study Shows

  PULLMAN, Wash. – There’s a lot more to memory than the ability to remember a story, who the President is, or what you ate for lunch. Do you recall who told you the story? How about whether you heard it before or after the President’s inauguration? Do you remember that you planned to meet a friend for lunch tomorrow?

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• WSU Pharmacy Professors Author Book on Diabetes Medications

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• WSU Researchers Invent Technique to Speed Development of Vaccines

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• Contagion!
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