Health

Environmental protection is not a goal to achieve but a task to be undertaken by one generation and handed to the next, Gina McCarthy, the former EPA administrator and current director of Harvard’s Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, told the Gazette in an Earth Day interview.

A “polygenic score” for obesity, a quantitative tool that predicts an individual’s inherited risk for becoming overweight, may identify an opportunity for early intervention.

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, King’s College London, and other institutions have developed a technique for measuring brain activity that’s 60 times faster than traditional fMRI.

Advocates and opponents of medical-aid-in-dying laws, also called physician-assisted death, gathered at Harvard Medical School for a two-day conference organized by the HMS Center for Bioethics.

In the first major multisite randomized controlled trial of workplace wellness programs, researchers found that while they may help people change certain behaviors, they do little to improve overall health or lower health care spending.

A new algorithm designed by HMS scientists can be incorporated into standard genetic tests to successfully identify patients harboring a tumor-fueling DNA repair defect found in multiple cancers treatable with existing drugs.

The first randomized clinical trial of vitamin D in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer found that high doses of supplements combined with chemotherapy delayed disease progression.

A new study shows that older men who maintain healthier diets are 25 percent less likely to develop physical impairment with aging.

Health and policy expert Sara Bleich has found that when trying to change the way people eat, being prescriptive isn’t always the answer.

A new survey by Harvard researchers shows that trust in leaders and institutions are at a low ebb in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, highlighting the importance of gaining trust as part of the response to the growing Ebola epidemic there.

Humanitarian workers from around the globe will visit Harvard to discuss how best to treat the increasing number of diabetics among refugee populations. Symposium organizers talk about the problem and what they hope the symposium will accomplish.

During her Radcliffe fellowship, pediatric oncologist Lisa Diller is studying the implications of genetic testing in newborns, and planning research that focuses on testing babies for gene changes associated with cancers known to strike the very young.

A panel of experts at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health discussed how the globe might feed an estimated human population of 10 billion by midcentury and suggested a diet high in plant foods, low in red meat, as well as a host of reforms to how food is produced and distributed today.

Study in mice reveals that adult tissues retain a memory of which genes are activated during very early development, and that that memory can be recovered. Under certain conditions, adult cells play their developmental “movie” in a slow rewind, reactivating fetal genes. These findings have important implications for regenerative medicine and cancer research.

A treatment previously shown to clear the precancerous skin lesions called actinic keratosis now appears to reduce the chance that the treated skin will develop squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs), the second-most-common form of skin cancer.

New research from Massachusetts General Hospital traces a previously unknown pathway from poor sleep to an increase in the fatty plaques that line blood vessels in atherosclerosis, a key feature of cardiovascular disease.

A long-term study, led by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, found that the more sugar-sweetened beverages people consumed, the greater their risk of premature death — particularly death from cardiovascular disease, and to a lesser extent from cancer.

Harvard Medical School researchers have found that impaired insulin signaling in the brain negatively affects cognition, mood, and metabolism, all components of Alzheimer’s disease.

Author Paul Greenberg said eating more and different seafood, emphasizing species that are less energy-intensive to harvest and high in omega-3 fats, can help answer the world’s food challenges in the coming decades.

Based on a Harvard study, the monthly rate of first-time opioid prescriptions dropped by more than half between 2012 and 2017. A new concern now is whether some patients are getting less-than-adequate treatment for their pain.

Research into extending humanity’s healthy lifespan has been progressing rapidly in recent years. In February, a group of aging and longevity scientists founded a nonprofit to foster the work and serve as a resource for governments and businesses looking to understand the potentially far-reaching implications of a population that lives significantly longer, healthier lives.

Scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Exeter Medical School have identified another 76 gene regions associated with sleep duration. Their findings may underpin future investigations into disordered sleep and understanding individual set points for how much is enough.

Harvard panel discusses doubling of maternal mortality rates in U.S. caused by inadequate hospital facilities, lack of access, insurance gaps, and systemic racism.

Eradicating the remaining pockets of HIV transmission in the U.S. by 2030 will be a challenge for the Trump administration, and depend on local cooperation in reaching high-risk groups with surveillance, prevention, and treatment, according to Harvard HIV/AIDS researcher Max Essex.

Every year, more than 18 million people around the world are told, “You have cancer.” In the U.S., nearly half of all men and more than one-third of women will…

AI is coming to a hospital near you — but it may be in the world’s remote regions that it could impact patients most. However, experts gathered at Harvard said its potential will not be realized unless it is deployed as part of broader health care solutions, not simply as a tool in search of problems.

Considering a new strategy for malaria control that complements existing insecticide-treated bed nets, a Harvard-led study found that mosquitoes landing on surfaces coated with the antimalarial drug atovaquone were blocked from developing the parasite that causes the disease.

Overlapping surgeries, in which more than one doctor performs sequential surgeries in different operating rooms, have raised concerns about potential adverse outcomes — but a new analysis shows they carry no greater risk for low-risk, noncardiac patients.

Analysis of data from the Nurses’ Health studies shows quitting smoking may reduce the risk of the severest form of rheumatoid arthritis.

Three years after undergoing gene therapy at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center to treat a life-threatening immune disorder, an Ohio college student is no longer thinking about his own “last shot” for health, but rather about medical school and “giving back.”