Health

The global obesity epidemic has been escalating for decades, yet long-term prevention efforts have barely begun and are inadequate, according to a new paper from international public health experts published in the Aug. 25 issue of the journal The Lancet.

Two Harvard-led research teams report identifying a critical protein that Ebola virus exploits to cause deadly infections. The protein target is an essential element through which the virus enters living cells to cause disease.

Harvard researchers say the rise of cooking likely occurred more than 1.9 million years ago and bestowed on human ancestors a gift of time in the form of hours each day not spent eating.

A novel imaging probe developed by a Harvard-led team of investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital may make it possible to diagnose accurately a dangerous infection of the heart valves.

In cancer, tumors aren’t uniform: they are more like complex societies, each with a unique balance of cancer cell types playing different roles. Understanding this “social structure” of tumors is critical for treatment decisions in the clinic because different cell types may be sensitive to different drugs.

More choices for Medicare beneficiaries may not always be better, according to Harvard Medical School research.

A new study finds that a protein key to Parkinson’s disease has likely been mischaracterized. The protein, alpha-synuclein, appears to have a radically different structure in healthy cells than previously thought, challenging existing disease paradigms and suggesting a new therapeutic approach.

Imagine a giant world like Jupiter, but more alien than any planet in our solar system. Instead of displaying gleaming clouds colored white and salmon, this world is darker than the blackest lump of coal. It glows only with a feeble red light like a stove’s electric burner — the result of scorching heat from a sun just 3 million miles away.

Between conception and birth, the human gut grows more than two meters long, looping and coiling within the tiny abdomen. Within a given species, the developing vertebrate gut always loops into the same formation — however, until now, it has not been clear why.

A new study by Harvard School of Public Health researchers finds a strong association between the consumption of red meat — particularly when the meat is processed — and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

Harvard research finds that sleep-disordered breathing is associated with a higher risk of cognitive impairment in older women.

Harvard researchers have created an analogue of what they think the first multicellular cooperation might have looked like, showing that yeast cells — in an environment that requires them to work for their food — grow and reproduce better in multicellular clumps than singly.

The Harvard School of Public Health has been awarded a five-year, $10 million grant from the National Cancer Institute for a new research center to study the relationship between obesity and cancer.

Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) has been awarded a $14.1 million, four-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to test the effectiveness of an innovative checklist-based childbirth safety program in reducing deaths and improving outcomes of mothers and infants in 120 hospitals in India.

Experts participating in an HSPH event expressed hope for rapid progress against Alzheimer’s disease even as they acknowledged that there’s little medical science can do today to help patients.

Bioengineers at Harvard have, for the first time, explained how the blast of an exploding bomb can translate into subtly disastrous injuries in the nerve cells and blood vessels of the brain.

A consortium led by scientists at the University of Oxford and Harvard Medical School has constructed the world’s most detailed genetic map, built from data from 30,000 African-Americans. The researchers assert that this is the most accurate and highest resolution genetic map yet.

Harvard researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) have identified a number of cancer genes that endow melanoma tumors with the ability to metastasize, making it possible to predict whether the tumors are likely to spread.

Treating the chromosome as both an editable and an evolvable template, researchers have demonstrated methods to rewrite a cell’s genome through powerful new tools for biotechnology, energy, and agriculture.

Not only is it important for physicians to be fully informed about any cancer in their patients’ family histories, but a massive new study led by a Harvard researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and a University of California scientist indicates that it is important to update that history whenever there are contemporaneous changes in it.

In their largest and most comprehensive effort to date, researchers from the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard affiliate, examined cells from more than 100 tumors, including 25 ovarian cancer tumors, to unearth the genes upon which cancers depend. They call it Project Achilles.

Although it sounds like a case of gender confusion on a molecular scale, the male hormone androgen spurs the growth of some breast tumors in women. In a new study, Harvard scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute provide the first details of the cancer cell machinery that carries out the hormone’s relentless growth orders.

A strategy that has been shown to reduce age-related health problems in several animal studies may also combat a major cause of age-associated infertility and birth defects.

When the final mission of NASA’s 30-year Space Shuttle program is launched on Friday (July 8), an animal experiment to test a novel therapy to increase bone mass will be on board. Harvard Medical School Asssistant Professor Mary Bouxsein is among the lead researchers.

The U.S. Postal Service unveiled a new postage stamp honoring Asa Gray, founder of Harvard’s Herbaria and the man considered the founder of American botany, in a ceremony at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

Results from a phase 1 drug trial by Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital researchers showed that a decades-old tuberculosis drug knocked out the autoimmune cells that attack diabetic patients’ insulin-producing cells, followed by indications that pancreatic function was improving, albeit transiently.

Scientists from around New England gathered at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to discuss the latest research and findings about tuberculosis at the Fifth Annual New England Tuberculosis Symposium.

Speakers at a Harvard School of Public Health conference on smoking hailed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s work to give the Food and Drug Administration new regulatory power over tobacco products and said, if wielded properly, it could prove a key weapon for better health.

Biologists from around the world are on campus this week for an international conference on invertebrate morphology sponsored by the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

Researchers at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum have highlighted female competition among plants, saying it is a new factor that could have driven the mystifying diversity of flowering plants.