Health

The body’s ability to repair DNA damage declines with age, which causes gradual cell demise, overall bodily degeneration, and greater susceptibility to cancer. Experiments in mice suggest a way to thwart DNA damage.

New research not only sheds new light on how hearing works, but could help clarify how it deteriorates over time.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have developed a drug cocktail that unlocks the potential to regrow inner-ear hair cells, which could help combat hearing loss.

Children ages 3 to 7 who don’t get enough sleep are more likely to have problems with attention, emotional control, and peer relationships in mid-childhood, according to a new study led by a Harvard pediatrician.

A rare anemia is opening scientists up to a new way of thinking about how to adapt and employ cytokines, messenger molecules of the blood and immune system, as tools for treatment and the promise of precision medicine.

The Wyss Institute and Harvard Medical School’s Personal Genome Project are collaborating with Lumos Labs, the makers of Lumosity, to investigate the relationship between genetics and memory, attention, and reaction speed.

Biologist Brian D. Farrell gave a lecture at the Harvard Museum of Natural History exploring the roots of consciousness.

Psychiatrist Jeff Huff is leading an MGH effort to determine whether positive thinking can promote better health.

Keith Ellenbogen captures the ecosystems deep within the oceans, bringing them to life through his underwater photography.

Researchers saw improvement in carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms after “real” acupuncture and brain remapping. The study also found no physiologic improvements from “sham” acupuncture.

In December, Congress passed a bipartisan law to boost federal medical research spending and to ease the approval of new drugs. In a panel discussion, experts at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health talked about its pros and cons, including whether it will be funded, and whether the relaxed drug approval guidelines are too easy.

The “Harvard Chan: This Week in Health” podcast sits down with Aaron Bernstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard Chan School, to discuss how climate change will impact health and health care costs.

New findings have the potential to help researchers more accurately identify microbiome enzymes and quantify their relative abundance.

Researchers find vitamin D helps the body fight acute respiratory infection.

At a Kennedy School panel on the future of health insurance, the analysts disagreed on many key points, but did agree that any new national plan, if there is one, will take time to create.

Ayelet Waldman stopped at Harvard Law School to talk about her new book, “A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference In My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life.”

A study by Harvard Medical School faculty members at Brigham and Women’s Hospital is exploring the health benefits of cocoa in a massive, 18,000-person study that may provide answers hinted at in smaller studies.

Harvard researchers were able, for the first time, to use patients’ own cells to create cells similar to those in bone marrow, and identify potential treatments for a rare blood disorder.

The Gazette speaks with the Medical School’s Staci Gruber, who thinks that state marijuana legalization policy has run ahead of science.

A Harvard Chan School researcher has launched a website to connect citizens with data on the water coming through their taps.

Harvard Medical School scientists and colleagues from Massachusetts General Hospital have partly restored hearing in mice with a genetic form of deafness. The new approach overcomes a longstanding barrier to gene therapy for inherited and acquired deafness.

A new study out of Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center suggests that precision medicine can provide vital care in treatment and diagnosis of pediatric brain tumors.

Science journalist Gary Taubes brought his “Case Against Sugar” to Harvard Law School.

Professor Jennifer Leaning, co-chair of a new committee set up to examine the health consequences of Syria’s civil war, talks about the country’s prospects for stability and recovery.

Using ultra-fast MRI scans, scientists are able to track rapid oscillations in brain activity that previously would have gone undetected, a development that could open the door to understanding fast-occurring cognitive processes that once appeared off-limits to scientists.

A new study by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center examines the neuroanatomy behind delusional misidentification syndromes.

Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have found a topical chemotherapy and an immune-system-activating compound that is able to rapidly clear actinic keratosis lesions from patients participating in a clinical trial.

Boston has become a safer place for bicyclists as it has improved its infrastructure, a new study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health says, with the chances of being injured in a bicycle accident falling 14 percent a year between 2009 and 2012.

A Harvard study has found that women who used ibuprofen or acetaminophen for six years or more were at higher risk of hearing loss than those who used these medications for a year or less.

A Harvard study shows that although an optimistic outlook may help women live longer, one other possibility is that higher optimism directly impacts our biological systems.