Health

All Health

  • Flavonoid-rich diet helps women decrease risk of ovarian cancer

    New research out of the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) reports that frequent consumption of foods containing the flavonoid kaempferol, including nonherbal tea and broccoli, was associated with a reduced risk of ovarian cancer.

  • Symposium addresses disparities in Native American health care

    Sunshine Dwojak, a fourth-year Harvard Medical School student, was 26 when her mother died of heart disease, leaving behind three children.  Dwojak’s mother was 48. “My grandmother said our family…

  • A smaller world, but not more intimate

    Our increasingly interconnected world has made it easier for information and disease to spread. However, a new study from Harvard University and Cornell University shows that fewer “degrees of separation” can make social networks too weak to disseminate behavioral change. The finding that “small world” networks are limited in their power to shape individual behavior could have implications for health care policy and the treatment of epidemics.

  • Fellow’s focus is foggy, froggy forest

    In the dark of the Sri Lankan cloud forest, the researchers’ only guide was the headlamps they used to light up the night, illuminating the cold, gray mist that drifted through the trees.

  • Genome study charts genetic landscape of lung cancer

    An international team of scientists Sunday (Nov. 4) announced the results of a systematic effort to map the genetic changes underlying lung cancer, the world’s leading cause of cancer deaths.

  • Researchers track down arthritis gene

    Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have discovered a gene involved in rheumatoid arthritis, a painful inflammation that affects 2.1 million Americans and which can destroy cartilage and bone within the afflicted joint.

  • Routine screening test examines substance abuse prevalence among teens

    Approximately 15 percent of teens receiving routine outpatient medical care in a New England primary care network had positive results on a substance abuse screening test, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

  • Decoding effort reveals fly species’ DNA

    An enormous effort to decode the DNA of one of science’s most important laboratory animals — the fruit fly — ended in success this week as a collaboration of researchers from 16 nations announced the sequencing of 10 fly species’ genomes.

  • Honorary degree to HSPH Dean Barry R. Bloom

    Barry R. Bloom, Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), is being awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The University annually awards one…

  • Massive decoding effort reveals fruit fly DNA

    An enormous effort to decode the DNA of one of the most important laboratory animals — the fruit fly — ended in success this week as a collaboration of researchers…

  • Researchers track down rheumatoid arthritis gene

    Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have discovered a gene involved in rheumatoid arthritis, a painful autoimmune disease that affects 2.1…

  • Study paints genetic portrait of lung cancer

    An international team of scientists today announced the results of a systematic effort to map the genetic changes underlying lung cancer, the world’s leading cause of cancer deaths. Appearing in…

  • Flier hails new, cooperative era in Harvard science

    Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier Friday evening issued a call for new approaches to advance the fight against disease, embracing cross-institutional collaborations at Harvard as a way to bring…

  • Study examines substance abuse prevalence among teens receiving routine medical care

    Approximately 15 percent of middle and upper middle class teens receiving routine outpatient medical care in a New England primary care network had positive results on a substance abuse questionnaire,…

  • Changes in diet and lifestyle may help prevent infertility

    Women who followed a combination of five or more lifestyle factors, including changing specific aspects of their diets, experienced more than 80 percent less relative risk of infertility due to ovulatory disorders compared to women who engaged in none of the factors.

  • Scientists image vivid ‘brainbows’

    By activating multiple fluorescent proteins in neurons, neuroscientists at Harvard University are imaging the brain and nervous system as never before, rendering these cells in a riotous spray of colors dubbed a “Brainbow.”

  • AAAS selects four faculty members as fellows

    The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently awarded the distinction of fellow to four Harvard faculty members. In all, 471 new members were named for their efforts toward advancing science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.

  • 1.8 million veterans lack health coverage

    Of the 47 million uninsured Americans, one in every eight (12.2 percent) is a veteran or member of a veteran’s household, according to a study by physicians from Cambridge Health Alliance who are also Harvard Medical School researchers. The study is published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Approximately 1.8 million veterans (12.7 percent of nonelderly veterans) were uninsured in 2004, up 290,000 since 2000, the study found. An additional 3.8 million members of their households were also uninsured and ineligible for VA care.

  • Med students don’t study war, ethics

    A new survey of U.S. medical students shows they receive little training about what they should or should not do in wartime, despite ethical questions over physician involvement in prisoner interrogation and a legal framework making a “doctor draft” possible.

  • DNA reveals Neanderthal redheads

    Ancient DNA retrieved from the bones of two Neanderthals suggests that at least some of them had red hair and pale skin, scientists report this week in the journal Science. The international team says that Neanderthals’ pigmentation may even have been as varied as that of modern humans, and that at least 1 percent of Neanderthals were likely redheads.

  • Lava provides window on early Earth

    Researchers at Harvard and the University of Hawaii believe they’ve resolved a long-standing controversy over the roots of islands — volcanoes in the middle of tectonic plates — showing that the islands’ lava provides a window into the early Earth’s makeup.

  • Researchers create colorful “Brainbow” images of the nervous system

    By activating multiple fluorescent proteins in neurons, neuroscientists at Harvard University are imaging the brain and nervous system as never before, rendering their cells in a riotous spray of colors dubbed a “Brainbow.”

  • Almost two million veterans lack health coverage

    One in every eight (12.2 percent) of the 47 million Americans without health insurance is a veteran or member of a veteran’s household, according to a study by Harvard Medical…

  • Economic motivation could underlie some ordering of imaging tests

    A new study by researchers at Institute for Technology Assessment in Massachusetts General Hospital’s (MGH) Department of Radiology finds that  physicians who consistently refer patients to themselves or members of…

  • Berkman named to head Center for Population and Development Studies

    Social epidemiologist Lisa Berkman has been appointed director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard Provost Steven E. Hyman today announced. “I am extremely pleased that Professor…

  • Improving child survival around the globe is key goal of United Nations

    Reducing child mortality rates for children under 5 — which in 2004 was 6.5 (per 1,000 children annually) in Latin America and the Caribbean, about 20 in South Asia, and 39 in sub-Saharan Africa — is one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These goals were established at the beginning of this decade to address the problems of global poverty, health, and sustainability. Targets were set related to these issues, to be achieved by 2015. However, there are concerns at the midway point that the targets will not be achieved.

  • Steven Pinker’s ‘Ideas on the Fringe’

    Not long ago, Steven Pinker appeared on “The Colbert Report.” He managed to explain the functioning of the human brain to Stephen Colbert in only five words: “Brain cells fire in patterns.”

  • Panel investigates media reporting on science and politics of stem cells

    Stem cells, politics, “fairness,” and what one participant termed “the disintegration of traditional journalism,” were all on the bill at Thursday night’s (Oct. 18) public forum titled “Stem Cells and the Media,” hosted by the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

  • Improving women’s health key Indian strategy

    Detailed research of Indian health disparities has revealed that significant differences in access to health care exist even within families, with the health and nutrition of women and girls taking a backseat to that of men and boys.

  • Field school brings students to Borneo

    Morning came in the middle of the night in the hikers’ hut partway up the side of Borneo’s towering Mount Kinabalu.