Health
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Cutting through the fog of long COVID
Researchers say new AI tool sharpens diagnostic process, may help identify more people needing care
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Warning for younger women: Be vigilant on breast cancer risk
Pathologist explains the latest report from the American Cancer Society
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Study shows vitamin D doesn’t cut cardiac risk
Outdoor physical activity may be a better target for preventive intervention, says researcher
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Weight-loss surgery down 25 percent as anti-obesity drug use soars
Study authors call for more research examining how trend affects long-term patient outcomes
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How to fight depression? Faster.
Hope flags when medications fail, isolating and endangering patients. Backed by a major grant, 2 Harvard scientists are focused on reducing the distance between diagnosis and recovery.
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Plastics are everywhere, even in our bodies
We ingest equivalent of credit card per week — how worried should we be? In ‘Harvard Thinking,’ experts discuss how to minimize exposure, possible solutions.
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Stem cells reduce brain damage
Mice with the kind of brain damage caused by strokes or cerebral palsy received implants of stem cells that resulted in the spontaneous replacement of many of the missing cells,…
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Research finds benefits for adults who have tonsils removed
A study followed 83 chronic tonsillitis sufferers over a three-year period. Brigham and Women’s Hospital researchers found that removing the tonsils was ultimately more effective than antibiotic treatments because those…
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Key gene discovered for obesity and diabetes
Obesity is closely associated with insulin resistance and is one of the leading risk factors for type 2 diabetes. Both affect more than 50 percent of the U.S. population. Little…
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New alternative to USDA dietary guidelines nearly twice as effective in reducing risk for major chronic disease
Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health rigorously assessed the diets of more than 100,000 men and women and found that the reduction in risk was nearly twice as…
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Outpatient cardiology care improves survival odds after heart attack
Previous research suggests that patients may live longer if they are under a cardiologist’s care while hospitalized for myocardial infarction. In a new study, John Ayanian, Harvard Medical School associate…
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Strict enforcement of lead abatement policies saves communities money
Exposure to lead is determined by blood tests, and measured in micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set a “level of…
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Drinking and hormones, alone and together, increase risk of breast cancer
According to the American Cancer Society, more than 190,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer annually. It is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women today. Using data from…
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Incidence of hip fractures reduced by walking
In the United States, one in every three adults 65 years old or older falls each year, with hip fractures resulting in the greatest number of deaths and most serious…
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Enzyme linked to pathology of Parkinson’s disease appears two-faced
A finding by Harvard Medical School researchers adds a new wrinkle to the story of Parkinson’s disease and insight into how failure to dispose of proteins can wreak havoc on…
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New device documents clot formation in living mice
In the October 2002 issue of the journal Nature Medicine, Bruce and Barbara Furie, both Harvard Medical School professors of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, reportrf on the…
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Long-term memory not fixed until after age one
When does long-term memory develop? This was a natural question for Conor Liston, a Harvard senior, and his mentor Jerome Kagan, Starch Research Professor of Psychology. Liston conducted experiments under…
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Patching up depression
In a study, almost half of the people who wore an antidepressant skin patch recovered after only six weeks, and many of them “showed remarkable improvement much sooner,” according to…
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Food pathogen vector shows promise against cancer
For the past four decades, researchers have poked and prodded Escherichia coli and Listeria monocytogenes – the basic science trade names of sometimes deadly bugs – to discover how they…
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Starship memories
Psychologists are at odds over the idea that people can forget traumatic events then “recover” intact memories of the trauma years later. On one side are clinicians, who observe that painful memories can be repressed, banished from a trauma survivor’s consciousness until they’re “recovered” with the help of certain psychotherapeutic techniques in adulthood. Memory researchers, on the other hand, say that people don’t repress traumatic events.
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Study: Use of acetaminophen linked to hypertension
Out of a group of 80,000 women surveyed, those who regularly took acetaminophen or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) – and had no previous history of high blood pressure – had…
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How your heart got where it is
A team of scientists at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine and The Forsyth Institute in Boston believes it has found the answer to how bodily organs are formed. And…
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Bacterial construct makes for elegant vaccine
Investigators from Harvard Medical School and London’s Hammersmith Hospital have found a way to use the bacterium Listeria along with Escherichia coli to fight disease instead of causing it. In…
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Early onset of perimenopause linked to economic hardship
Perimenopause is the period leading up to menopause. The World Health Organization defines perimenopause as the phase during which hormonal, biological, and clinical changes begin. Studies have shown that up…
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Specific types of exercise can significantly reduce risk of heart disease among men
A pool of 44,452 men from the Health Professionals’ Follow-Up Study were monitored via questionnaire every two years from 1986 to 1998 to determine potential coronary heart disease risk factors…
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Ban on coal burning in Dublin cleans the air, reduces death rates
In the 1980s, Dublin’s air quality suffered as people switched from oil to cheaper and more available coal for home and water heating. On Sept. 1, 1990, the Irish government…
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AIDS vaccine trials underway
A new AIDS vaccine is being tested in Boston, according to senior investigator Clyde Crumpacker, infectious disease specialist in the Virology Research Clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC)…
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Protector protein part of nerve cell defense
Heat shock proteins are known to protect all cell types from various general assaults. They were originally discovered when cultured cells that were heated expressed the proteins at high levels…
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Hormone receptor variation linked to cancer risk
Endometrial cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women in this country, according to National Cancer Institute statistics. Progesterone’s important protective role showed up three decades ago, articulated in…
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Dual signals may drive early breast cancer
Researchers from the lab of Joan Brugge, Harvard Medical School professor of cell biology, may have uncovered one of the central mechanisms of breast cancer. They found that dual signals…
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Genes found that regulate brain size
A gene that builds bigger brains, called beta-catenin, was discovered in the laboratory of Christopher A. Walsh, Bullard Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Researchers there engineered increased activity…
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Harvard researchers complete genomic sequence of deadly malaria parasite
Malaria is the world’s most serious parasitic tropical disease and kills more people than any communicable disease except for tuberculosis. There is more human malaria in Africa today than at…
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Mammalian teeth regrown in lab
A study involved seeding cells from the immature teeth of six-month old pigs onto biodegradable polymer scaffolds. The researchers then placed these structures into rat hosts. Within 30 weeks, small,…
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Students develop system to fight TB
A new system developed by Harvard undergraduates delivers anti-tuberculosis drugs through an inhaler, increasing the likelihood that patients will take them over longer periods, and reducing the side effects of…
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Chili peppers and inflammation
Researchers have discovered that the burinng pain of arthritis is similar to the pain associated with eating chili peppers. “The receptor activated by chili peppers in the mouth and other…
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Researchers isolate key part of cells’ ‘death’ signals
In the cover article of the September 2002 issue of the journal Cancer Cell, researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reported that peptide subunits of cell-signaling “BH3” proteins could out-maneuver opposing…