Health
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What your brain score says about your body
Simple tool can be used to identify risk factors for cancer and heart disease too, says new study
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Son’s diabetes diagnosis sent scientist on quest for cure
Decades later, Doug Melton and team are testing treatment that could make insulin shots obsolete
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Wildfire smoke can harm heart and lungs even after the fire has ended
First study to fully assess its impact on all major types of cardiovascular, respiratory diseases
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Young researcher’s ALS attack plan is now a no-go
Career award among casualties of ‘terrifying’ cuts affecting lab of David Sinclair
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Miracle drugs don’t come out of nowhere
Healthcare, innovation experts say funding cuts to university labs will slow or stop basic research on which breakthroughs are built
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Vitamin D supplements may slow biological aging
Trial shows protection against telomere shortening, which heightens disease risk
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Coronavirus screening may miss two-thirds of infected travelers entering U.S.
Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch says two-thirds of travelers with coronavirus who are entering U.S. may have been missed by screening efforts.
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So how bad is coronavirus in U.S.? We don’t know yet
A rapid expansion of coronavirus testing is needed to understand the extent and nature of the epidemic’s track in the U.S., Harvard experts said.
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A big coronavirus mystery: What about the children?
A key unanswered question in the coronavirus epidemic concerns why children seem to be getting fewer or less-serious infections from the new contagion.
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Endurance athletes found to have enlarged aortas
A new study has found that like their younger counterparts, a high percentage of endurance athletes aged 50 to 75 years have an enlarged aorta. Now researchers must determine if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
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A ‘call to duty’ to battle a deadly global threat
Boston-area researchers are collaborating as part of an international partnership working on a response to the new coronavirus.
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What we know and don’t know about pot
With legal marijuana easier to find, a Harvard professor addresses myths and progress finding answers about pot’s health impacts.
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Scientists from Harvard, China to unite against coronavirus
With nearly 78,000 cases and more than 2,300 deaths from the novel coronavirus, Harvard University scientists will join forces with colleagues from China to improve diagnostics, develop vaccines to prevent new infections, and antiviral therapies to treat existing ones.
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Drop in cancer deaths lifts U.S. life expectancy
A decline in cancer mortality was a prominent feature of recent good news about U.S. life expectancy. The Gazette spoke with the director of the Chan School’s Zhu Family Center for Global Cancer Prevention to understand why.
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In soda tax fight, echoes of tobacco battles
Taxes on sugary drinks are potentially effective tools to fight the obesity epidemic and advocates are drawing lessons from the long battle against tobacco as they plot what they know will be a tough road ahead.
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‘Game Changers’ puts muscle behind plant-based diet
“The Game Changers” brought a panel of athletes and experts to tout the benefits of a plant-based diet to Harvard.
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Coronavirus likely to infect the global economy
A Harvard Business School expert says effects will strengthen as manufacturers everywhere feel the pinch of slowing one of the world’s largest economies.
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Targeted drug shows promise in advanced kidney cancer
Harvard researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have developed a novel targeted drug that shows promise in advanced kidney cancer by interfering with the abnormal blood vessel formation that fuels tumor growth.
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Coronavirus likely now ‘gathering steam’
Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch said evidence indicates that the international cordon keeping coronavirus cases bottled up in China is a leaky one, and it’s likely that the relative handful of global cases reported so far are undercounted. If true, that will lead to widespread illness internationally, including in the U.S.
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Heatwave = heat stroke = ER visit
Bringing climate change into the examining room by discussing links between a warming environment and the everyday health of patients.
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Antioxidant reverses most BPA-induced fertility damage in worms
Treatment with a naturally occurring antioxidant, CoQ10, restores many aspects of fertility in C. elegans worms following exposure to BPA. The findings offer a possible path toward undoing BPA-induced reproductive harms in people.
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Coronavirus cases hit 17,400 and are likely to surge
Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina said as many as 100,000 people are likely already infected with the new coronavirus, with many more likely to come.
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What we know — and don’t know — about the coronavirus outbreak
As the number of coronavirus cases rapidly grows, the Gazette spoke with Professor of Epidemiology Marc Lipsitch, an expert in the spread of infectious disease and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics.
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Disinfecting your hands with ‘magic’
Harvard researchers have devised what they hope is a better way to disinfect hands, using tiny aerosolized nanodroplets of water and nontoxic disinfectants that not only leave hands sterile, but use so little water the hands stay dry.
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Super cool way to lose fat
The lab that invented cryolipolisis or “Coolsculpting,” a popular nonsurgical method for reducing fat under the skin, is developing a promising new form of the technology that can selectively reduce fat almost anywhere in the body using an injectable ice solution or “slurry.”
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A solid vaccine for liquid tumors
A new study presents an alternative treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that has the potential to eliminate AML cells completely.
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5 healthy habits to live by
A Harvard study has found that people who practice healthy habits at age 50 lived more years free of chronic diseases compared to those who did not practice any of these habits.
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DNA damage linked to plastic additive
New findings shed light as to how DEHP, a common chemical in plastic, may impact human reproductive health.
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Troubling predictions
Researchers predict a marked rise in American adults with obesity or severe obesity in 10 years, leaving several states with obesity prevalence close to 60 percent.
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An algorithm to help predict Alzheimer’s
Researchers have developed a software-based method of scanning electronic health records to estimate the risk that a healthy person will receive a dementia diagnosis in the future.
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Merry and bright?
Natalie Dattilo discusses how the holiday season can trigger the blues — and how to help avoid them.
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Home hospital model reduces costs by 38%, study says
The first randomized controlled trial of the home hospital model in the U.S. reports improvements in health care outcomes while reducing costs by 38 percent.
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Pediatric antibiotic exposure ‘alarming’
A new study has found that between 2007 and 2017, children in eight low- and middle-income countries received, on average, 25 antibiotic prescriptions from birth through age 5 — up to five times higher than the already high levels observed in high-income settings.
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Fewer Americans are getting primary care
A national analysis revealed an alarming decline in primary care use, which is associated with better health outcomes than episodic, inconsistent care. The decline was most pronounced among younger Americans and those without complex medical conditions.
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Psychology’s new openness to religion
A McLean psychologist has pioneered a program that aims to bring together two key emotional forces at work in patients’ lives: spirituality and counseling.
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More than a watchdog
A study in mice shows the nervous system not only detects the presence of Salmonella in the gut but actively stops the organism from infecting the body by shutting the cellular gates that allow bacteria to invade the intestine and spread beyond it.