The discovery of six new cancer-susceptibility genes grew out of more than 10 years of research by Alan D’Andrea into Fanconi anemia, a condition known to affect only 500 families…
Iron-deficient anemia reduces the oxygen-carrying capacity of red blood cells, thus decreasing energy and endurance. When there is not enough iron, the red blood cells are not able to produce…
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most common cause of cardiac death among young people and affects one in every 500 individuals, including professional athletes. It is characterized by an enlargement…
In a study, researchers obtained cow oocytes (donor eggs from cow ovaries) and removed and discarded the nuclei, which contain the cells’ genetic material, leaving behind just the shell. A…
Scientists have known the identity of two genes that can influence the ability of insulin genes to trigger insulin production in the beta cells of the pancreas. Through subsequent research…
Scientists have known about the longevity benefits of caloric restriction since experiments in the 1930s showed that rats lived much longer if their food intake was severely restricted. Broadly speaking,…
In the United States, researchers at three Harvard University-affiliated hospitals — Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital — have been testing a powerful drug on…
Discovered in the Children’s Hospital Boston laboratory of Judah Folkman, Endostatin is a natural substance that blocks the formation of new blood vessels around and in tumors, thereby disrupting their…
Developed as an antibiotic 30 years ago, a drug called minocycline was later discovered to ease acne, rheumatoid arthritis, and other inflammatory conditions. A few years ago, it was shown…
Monet and other painters exploited the parallel visual processing of color and brightness. A sunset seems to shimmer, a field of poppies seems to wave, and a river seems to…
A new book by Harvard School of Public Health Assistant Professor of Risk Analysis and Decision Science Kimberly Thompson takes a look at how the way we live is causing…
Doctors at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are using radio waves –- the same energy that sends signals to your car radio -– to gently dissolve small amounts of unwanted…
Asthma is one of the most common chronic conditions in America, afflicting about 15 million people and causing 5,000 deaths annually, according to the National Institutes of Health. Asthma rates…
A study published in the May 7, 2002, issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association found that tea consumption is associated with an increased rate of survival following…
Clinicians have known for years that organs function at different rates — the heart beats, kidneys transport ions and electrolytes, the liver metabolizes lipids, sugars, and amino acids differently over…
Milk intake has decreased significantly over the past three decades while the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes has increased. The authors of a Harvard research study note that…
Harvard Medical School researchers Vadim Bolshakov, Evgeny Tsvetkov, and Bill Carlezon, based at McLean Hospital, reported with colleagues in the April 11, 2002 issue of the journal Neuron that they…
A new technology developed by Harvard Medical School researchers in the laboratory of Yang Shi, associate professor of pathology, extends the range of possibilities of selective interference of gene expression…
Harvard researcher Herbert Benson, who has been studying a meditation technique known as “g Tum-mo” for 20 years, says that “Buddhists feel the reality we live in is not the…
A research report provides a possible explanation for a class of birth defects that appears to be on the rise. A protein normally involved in programmed cell death may, as…
Paul Harris, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, says there are two very different ways to define imagination. “You can either see it as disappearing or waning during…
Richard McNally, a Harvard professor of psychology, and his colleagues recruited six women and four men who claimed they had been spirited away by extraterrestrials, some of them more than once.
Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness for Americans over 60 years of age. It affects more than 14 million people. But how it attacks the macula, the…
Research has shown that leptin is an important hormone with a hand in many metabolic processes. It undoubtedly has widespread effects that may influence diabetes as well as obesity. Recent…
About 16 million Americans have type 2 diabetes, which can cause blindness, kidney failure, and heart disease. Now researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health have linked a diet…
George Demetri, medical director of the Sarcoma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, was the lead investigator of a clinical study that…
A Harvard research team led by Laurie Glimcher, Irene Heinz Given professor of immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health and a Harvard Medical School professor of medicine, two…
Researchers are working feverishly to develop an effective vaccine against the AIDS virus. Various vaccines have been tested. One of the more promising vaccine trials involved eight monkeys. When one…
Angiogenesis is the process by which cancer tumors develop a network of blood vessels to feed them, so that they may continue their growth. The strategy that cancer cells use…
Harvard Medical School researchers have discovered that a pigment contained in the egg of the South African claw-toed frog is indispensable for development. Witout the pigment, called biliverdin, which is…
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