Health

Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found that even dying stars could host planets with life — and if such life exists, they believe we might be able to detect it within the next decade.

In January, when the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a meta-analysis of 100 studies that probed the relationship between body mass index and mortality — studies that found slightly overweight people have lower all-cause mortality than normal weight and underweight people — media around the globe trumpeted the news.

Naomi E. Pierce talked about her research on symbiosis as part of the “Evolution Matters” lecture series.

A Harvard Medical School lecturer and former head of the federal agency overseeing Medicare and Medicaid shared his experiences pushing for improved health care quality, saying that teamwork, cost curtailment, and a focus on patients are keys to success.

Peter Turnbaugh and co-authors Corinne Ferrier Maurice and Henry Joseph Haiser show that as drugs are administered, the activity of human gut microbes can change dramatically. Understanding how those changes affect drug chemistry could help researchers to design drugs that work more effectively and antibiotics that more specifically target pathogens.

Earth-like planets potentially capable of supporting life may be right in our galactic neighborhood, according to researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the California Institute of Technology.

Adequate levels of vitamin D during young adulthood could cut the risk of adult-onset type 1 diabetes by as much as 50 percent, according to new findings by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health.

A U.N. official said Thursday that the world has made progress in reducing poverty and in meeting some of its eight Millennium Development Goals, but that entrenched inequality of women will slow efforts to meet equality and maternal mortality targets by 2015.

Professor Arkhat Abzhanov explored links between dinosaurs and birds in talk kicking off a five-part series called “Evolution Matters.” The next lecture is scheduled for Feb. 12.

A team of scientists gained some critical intelligence, not by designing a new antibiotic, but by interfering with the metabolism of the bacterial “bugs” — E. coli in this case — and rendering them weaker in the face of existing antibiotics.

The Harvard Malaria Forum explored the status of the global fight against malaria, focusing on how businesses can aid government and nonprofit efforts against the global killer.

Students at the Harvard School of Public Health are joining forces to draw attention to World Cancer Day on Feb. 4, organizing a symposium of experts to talk about the problem and collecting signatures for a declaration of cancer-related global health priorities.

A novel experiment illuminates the importance of the doctor-patient relationship, providing the first data into the underlying neurobiology of the caregiver.

he National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) has awarded Harvard Medical School a $100 million grant to create a transformative 10-year initiative — Harvard Integrated Program to Protect and Improve the Health of NFLPA Members.

For more than two decades, scientists have relied on studies linking tooth development in juvenile primates with their weaning as a rough proxy for understanding similar landmarks in the evolution of early humans. New research from Harvard, however, challenges that thinking by showing that tooth development and weaning aren’t as closely related as previously thought.

Two mutations that collectively occur in 71 percent of malignant melanoma tumors have been discovered in what Harvard scientists call the “dark matter” of the cancer genome, where cancer-related mutations haven’t been previously found.

Harvard stem cell biologists have proven that it is possible to turn one type of already differentiated neuron into another inside the brain, and their findings may have enormous implications for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

For decades, scientists wondered whether there was some subtle difference between parts of the genetic code that, while different, appear to encode the same amino acid. Harvard researchers now have the answer.

The world we live in was made possible by the precursors to plants, which crossed two evolutionary hurdles that transformed not only plant life, but also the Earth’s atmosphere and its once-barren continents, Arnold Arboretum Director William Friedman said in a recent lecture.

As described in a Jan. 16 paper in Nature, a team of researchers led by Hopi Hoekstra, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and molecular and cellular biology, studied two species of mice – oldfield mice and deer mice – and identified four regions in their genome that appear to influence the way they dig their burrows.

AIDS researchers gathered at the Harvard School of Public Health to mark 10 years of work under a landmark federal anti-AIDS program that has led to significant progress against the epidemic.

U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2010 Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans consume at least three servings of whole-grain products daily, and the new U.S. national school lunch standards require that at least half of all grains be whole-grain rich. However, no single standard exists for defining any product as a “whole grain,” according to a Harvard School of Public Health study.

Physicians may soon have a new way to screen patients for Barrett’s esophagus, a precancerous condition usually caused by chronic exposure to stomach acid. Harvard researchers at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital have developed an imaging system enclosed in a capsule about the size of a multivitamin pill that creates detailed, microscopic images of the esophageal wall.

The average physician will spend more than 10 percent of his or her career facing an open malpractice claim. Some specialists will spend upwards of 27 percent.

More than a third of U.S. physicians responding to a national survey indicated they prescribed brand-name drugs when appropriate generic substitutes were available.

Scientists at Harvard have pioneered a breakthrough technique that can reproduce an individual’s entire genome from a single cell. The development could revolutionize everything from cancer treatment, by allowing doctors to obtain a genetic fingerprint of a person’s cancer early in treatment, to prenatal testing.

According to researchers, results from a meta-analysis of 11 independent amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) research studies are giving hope to the ALS community by showing, for the first time, that the fatal disease may be treatable.

Harvard physicians and scientists are joining forces to tackle one of the most troubling developments on the medical landscape: the rise of drug-resistant bacteria.

Researchers from Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital have found that some patients who receive generic drugs that vary in their color are over 50 percent more likely to stop taking the drug, leading to potentially important and potentially adverse clinical effects.

As described in a Dec. 19 paper in Neuron by Venkatesh Murthy, a professor of molecular and cellular biology, researchers have, for the first time, shed light on how the neural feedback mechanism of the olfactory system works by identifying where the signals go, and which type of neurons receive them.