Health

Bethany Hedt has always been in love with numbers. Her challenge has been finding a way to feed that love while fulfilling an equally strong drive to help the people around her.

Yoga is a popular activity for many Harvard undergraduates looking to stay fit or reduce stress. For John Passanese, a Lowell House senior, yoga has additional importance — it can be an excellent tool for managing chronic pain. For more than 20 years, Passanese’s mother has suffered from multiple sclerosis (MS), a neurodegenerative disease that attacks the body’s central nervous system. MS can cause a range of debilitating symptoms, including cognitive disabilities, paralysis, loss of vision, and chronic pain. There is no known cure.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced that Harvard Medical School (HMS) will receive $117.5 million over the next five years for the establishment of a Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) that will transform patient-oriented, laboratory-to-bedside research at HMS and its affiliated hospitals.

n investigating the intricacies of the body’s biological rhythms, scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have discovered the existence of a “food-related clock,” which can supersede the “light-based” master clock that serves as the body’s primary timekeeper.

The National Institutes of Health today announced that Harvard Medical School (HMS) will receive $117.5 million over the next five years for the establishment of a Clinical and Translational Science…

The announcement last year by scientists in Japan, at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), and at the Whitehead Institute that they had each — independently — coaxed adult cells into reverting to an embryonic stem cell-like state was arguably the biggest news in developmental biology since the cloning of Dolly the ewe.

Scientists search for drug candidates in some very unlikely places. Not only do they churn out synthetic compounds in industrial-scale laboratories, but they also scour coral reefs and scrape tree bark in the hope of stumbling upon an unsuspecting molecule that just might turn into next year’s big block buster. But one region that scientists have not been searching is their guts. Literally.

A cross-disciplinary team of Harvard University, Whitehead Institute, and Broad Institute researchers has uncovered significant new information about the molecular changes that underlie the process by which adult cells can…

Over the past 30 years, the number of smokers in the United States has steadily decreased — a tribute to the efforts of public-health workers everywhere. And while this fact is indisputable, less obvious are the social and cultural forces that lead an individual to kick the habit.

The announcement last year by scientists in Japan, at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), and at the Whitehead Institute that they had each — independently — coaxed adult cells…

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) is expanding options for users of its secure PatientSite portal by joining forces with Google to offer a new way to safely exchange medical…

Over the last 30 years, the number of smokers in the U.S. has steadily decreased—a tribute to the efforts of public-health workers everywhere. And while this fact is unarguable, less…

Jim Hu and colleagues at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) assessed surgical utilization and complications, lengths of hospital stay, and cancer outcomes in more than 2,700 men who underwent prostate cancer surgery.

For a while last month, whenever Scott Elfenbein ’11 was thirsty he’d take a pull or two from a Nalgene bottle. But Elfenbein was quaffing from Nalgene for science, not for convenience. He was one of about 80 Harvard College students who volunteered for a two-week April study intended to track levels of bisphenol A in their bodies.

The Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) has relaunched its Web site, The Nutrition Source. One of the highlights of the improved site is a freely downloadable version of the Healthy Eating Pyramid, built by nutrition faculty at the School, which should appeal to educators and health professionals as well as institutions such as schools and hospitals.

This year six doctors are pursuing a one-year master’s degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). The students are all part of the School’s flexible Special Study Program that allows them to design their own curriculum and tailor it to their individual interests.

Tuberculosis specialists came from universities around the country to discuss the state of the disease at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and to honor Harvard School of Public Health Dean Barry R. Bloom, who has announced that he will be stepping down.

An innovative laser treatment for early vocal-cord cancer, developed at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), successfully restores patients’ voices without radiotherapy or traditional surgery, which can permanently damage vocal quality.

Using ingenious molecular espionage, scientists have found how a single key enzyme, seemingly the Swiss Army knife in HIV’s toolbox, differentiates and dynamically binds both DNA and RNA as part of the virus’s fierce attack on host cells. The work is described this week (May 7) in the journal Nature.

Women who quit smoking significantly reduce their risk of death from coronary heart disease within five years and have about a 20 percent lower risk of death from smoking-related cancers within that time period, according to a study in the May 7 issue of JAMA.

Women who quit smoking significantly reduce their risk ofdeath from coronary heart disease within 5 years and have about a 20percent lower risk of death from smoking-related cancers within thattime…

The official opening of the BASF Advanced Research Initiative at Harvard was celebrated with an inaugural two-day symposium (April 29-30) on biofilms.

Postmenopausal women taking hormone therapy appear to have an increased risk of stroke regardless of when they started treatment, according to a report in the April 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

The risk of heart disease in women associated with being overweight or obese is reduced but not eliminated by higher levels of physical activity, according to a report in the April 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Harvard Professor of Biology and of Geology Charles Marshall presented his Tuesday (April 29), suggesting that it was an increase in interactions between species, such as predation, that drove an escalating evolutionary process that led to the development of teeth and claws and the wide variety of characteristics that we see among Earth’s animals today.

There have been many changes in the health care landscape over the two decades since Harvard Medical School’s (HMS) Department of Health Care Policy was inaugurated, but much work remains to ensure equitable, effective health care for all. That was the message of speakers at the 20th Anniversary Symposium of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy Tuesday (April 29) at the HMS New Research Building.

Putting more meat on the theory that dinosaurs’ closest living relatives are modern-day birds, molecular analysis of a shred of 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex protein — along with that of 21 modern species — confirms that dinosaurs share common ancestry with chickens, ostriches, and to a lesser extent, alligators.

Paul Farmer remembers his patients and the lessons they’ve taught him, even the hard ones.

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators, in collaboration with Harvard University Health Services, have found that 90 days of vigorous athletic training produces significant changes in cardiac structure and function, and that the type of change varies with the type of exercise performed.

In a demonstration that even some of the most hard-to-treat tumors may one day succumb to therapies aimed at molecular “weak points,” researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report the first instance in which metastatic melanoma has been driven into remission by a targeted therapy.