Health

All Health

  • Brain-training app creators join in the genetics game

    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.

  • Poking at consciousness

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

  • The grateful life may be a longer one

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

  • Underwater photography inspires conservation

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

  • Study shows differences in effects of ‘real’ and ‘sham’ acupuncture 

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

  • The changes in drug research, testing

    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.

  • For better health, reduce greenhouse gases

    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.

  • Gut details

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

  • Study confirms vitamin D protects against colds and flu

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

  • The confused future of health care

    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.

  • A case against the drug war

    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.”

  • Cocoa for pleasure — and health?

    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.

  • Patients’ cells provide possible treatment for blood disorder

    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.

  • Playing catch-up on marijuana

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

  • Where lead lurks

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

  • New gene-delivery therapy restores partial hearing, balance in deaf mice 

    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.

  • New hope for children with brain tumors

    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.

  • Sugar stands accused

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

  • No easy answer for health void in Syria

    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.

  • Spotting speedy brain activity

    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.

  • Love interrupted

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

  • Topical treatment clears precancerous skin lesions

    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.

  • Better days for Boston cyclists

    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.

  • Longer use of pain relievers tied to hearing loss in women

    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.

  • How power of positive thinking works

    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.

  • Fresh ways to fight cancer

    Cancer patients have new weapons on their side, provided by targeted drug therapy and, more recently, immune therapy. Now, the recent discovery of large numbers of noncoding RNA that are active in disease provides a new opportunity to both understand and fight cancer, according to Pier Paolo Pandolfi, professor at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cancer Center and Cancer Research Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

  • Can happiness lead toward health?

    A new Harvard center on health and happiness had its academic coming-out party Friday, hosting a daylong symposium that highlighted what science does and doesn’t say about the interaction of health and happiness, and identifying pathways where investigators should probe next.

  • Hunger for change

    A panel sponsored by the Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Union of Concerned Scientists brought food luminaries to talk about the need for a national food policy.

  • How Zika infects the growing brain

    Studies have suggested that the Zika virus enters neural progenitor cells by grabbing onto a specific protein called AXL on the cell surface. Now, scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Novartis have shown that this is not the only route of infection. The scientists demonstrated that Zika infected neural progenitor cells even when the cells did not produce the AXL protein.

  • Colorful clones track stem cells

    Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have used a colorful cell-labeling technique to track the development of the blood system and trace the lineage of an adult blood cell traveling through the vast networks of veins, arteries, and capillaries back to its parent stem cell in the marrow.