Health

Using data collected from more than 24,000 initially healthy American women, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have devised a new Web-based formula called the Reynolds Risk Score that for the first time more accurately predicts risk of heart attack or stroke among women. In addition to usual risk factors like cholesterol, blood pressure, and smoking, the new Reynolds Risk Score adds information on two new factors: family history of heart attack prior to age 60 and blood level of C-reactive protein (CRP), a measure of artery inflammation. Using the new risk assessment tool, the researchers found that nearly 50 percent of women in the study who were estimated to be at “intermediate risk” for heart attack or stroke based on current guidelines were in fact at significantly higher or lower risk levels.

The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Lund University, and Novartis have announced the completion of a genome-wide map of genetic differences in humans and their relationship to type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders. The announcement was made Monday (Feb. 12). All results of the analysis are being made accessible, free of charge, on the Internet to scientists around the world.

Identifying the mechanisms that control cell life span is one of the more important questions facing stem cell researchers, indeed, all researchers attempting to understand normal and abnormal cell and organ development. So the recent discovery by a Harvard Stem Cell Institute team that a family of well-known transcription factors plays a major role in regulating the life span and longevity of hematopoietic, or blood, stem cells is of particular note. Transcription factors are proteins that participate in the synthesis of RNA using a DNA template.

Bioengineers and public health researchers have developed a novel spray-drying method for preserving and delivering the most common tuberculosis (TB) vaccine. The low-cost and scalable technique offers several potential advantages over conventional freezing procedures, such as greater stability at room temperature and use in needle-free delivery. The spray-drying process could one day provide a better approach for vaccination against TB and help prevent the related spread of HIV/AIDS in the developing world.

Edward O. Wilson sees a future in which science and religion join forces to save the natural world. Without such an alliance, said the legendary Harvard biologist and author, an alternative future is in store for the human race: one of accelerating environmental cataclysm fueled by overpopulation, deforestation, declining fisheries, and climate change.

What do you do if you’re sure you’ve found a way to knock out the AIDS virus but you can’t get the medicine into infected cells? That was the problem faced by Judy Lieberman, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

Through an online survey of more than 2,000 people, psychologists at Harvard University have found that we perceive the minds of others along two distinct dimensions: agency, an individual’s ability for self-control, morality, and planning; and experience, the capacity to feel sensations such as hunger, fear, and pain.

The population of the orangutan, one of humankind’s closest animal relatives, has declined with human expansion. The orangutan population declined by 97 percent in the 20th century and over 90 percent of their rainforest habitat has been destroyed. The factors contributing to that decline – illegal logging, conversion of forestland to agriculture, and hunting to supply the pet trade – have long been known.

Modern contraception has come a long way in the past 20 years, what with diaphragms, hormones, implants, intrauterine devices, condoms, spermicides, and sterilization. But the boom in birth control has been a bust for the poorest women in the world.

“Your gut is a complicated place,” notes Shannon Turley, an assistant professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School. In addition to processing food three or more times a day, an intestine needs to protect you from being damaged by yourself.

Running 26.2 miles is not for the faint of heart. Abnormalities in heart structure and function were found in men and women who ran the Boston Marathon in 2004 and 2005 by Harvard Medical School researchers.

As you might guess, big-brained birds survive better in the wild than those less cerebral for their size. Scientists guessed that too, but they had to prove it to themselves.

Learning disabilities. Cerebral palsy. Mental retardation. A “silent pandemic” of these and other neurodevelopmental disorders is under way owing to industrial chemicals in the environment that impair brain development in fetuses and young children. That’s the conclusion of a data analysis by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, who point to 201 chemicals – most of them common – known to inflict lasting neurological damage in humans. Information on possible neurotoxic effects exists, however, for only a small fraction of the thousands of chemicals in use around the world.

Scientists have muscled in on a genetic switch that allows mice to run longer and faster. Humans possess the same switch, so the discovery might open new paths to treating muscle-wasting diseases and building better bodies.

The plant with the world’s largest flower – typically a full meter across, with a bud the size of a basketball – evolved from a family of plants whose blossoms are nearly all tiny, botanists write this week in the journal Science. Their genetic analysis of rafflesia reveals that it is closely related to a family that includes poinsettias, castor oil plants, the tropical root crop cassava, and the trees that produce natural rubber.

A new map of human genetic diversity provides a powerful tool for understanding how each person is unique. Created by researchers at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and…

Even as studies have consistently found an association between moderate alcohol consumption and reduced heart attack risk in men, an important question has persisted: What if the men who drank…

Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report they have found how the brain turns on a system designed to protect its nerve cells from toxic “free radicals,” a waste product of…

Many studies have shown the nutritional benefits of eating fish (finfish or shellfish). Fish is high in protein and omega-3 fatty acids. But concerns have been raised in recent years…

Each year, numerous postdoctoral and faculty fellowships/grants are available to the Harvard medical community by invitation only. These include the Burroughs Wellcome Career Award at the Scientific Interface, the Damon…

A designer drug significantly less toxic than thalidomide has shown impressive activity in prolonging survival of patients with advanced multiple myeloma, report researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. A multicenter Phase II study of lenalidomide, an altered version of thalidomide, found a response rate of 25 percent among patients with myeloma that had recurred despite multiple prior therapies. Especially important was that long-lasting responses averaging 28 months were seen. When another drug, dexamethasone, was added in patients who were not benefiting from lenalidomide alone, the response rate was improved in a third.

A treatment mainstay for prostate cancer puts men at increased risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to a large observational study published in the Sept. 20 Journal of Clinical Oncology. “Men with prostate cancer have high five-year survival rates, but they also have higher rates of noncancer mortality than healthy men,” says study author Nancy Keating, assistant professor of health care policy and of medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). “This study shows that a common hormonal treatment for prostate cancer may put men at significant risk for other serious diseases. Patients and physicians need to be aware of the elevated risk as they make treatment decisions.”

Findings from a study led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital Boston have rewritten science’s understanding of the process of skin tanning – an insight that has…

A treatment mainstay for prostate cancer puts men at increased risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to a large observational study published in the Sept. 20, 2006, Journal of…

A multi-institutional team of Harvard researchers may have advanced our understanding of physiological aging with a new study in which they greatly reduced the impact of aging on blood stem cells. A report on their findings appears in the latest edition of the journal Nature along with similar but independent findings from research teams at the universities of North Carolina and Michigan.

That intern working on you at the hospital may be so sleep-deprived his or her performance is no better than that of a drunk. That’s one conclusion of a national study by investigators at the Harvard Medical School.

Opening a whole new interface between nanotechnology and neuroscience, scientists at Harvard University have used slender silicon nanowires to detect, stimulate, and inhibit nerve signals along the axons and dendrites of live mammalian neurons.

More than 30 years after the end of the war in Vietnam, the effect of lingering stress on Americans who fought there continues to cause stress among researchers.

Heat waves, like the one that scorched the country in July, are more deadly for some people than for others. Poor blacks and diabetics fare the worst. As you might guess, extreme heat is also hard on the elderly. But as you might not guess, extreme cold has a greater impact.

Experts seeking to explain the amazing diversity of the tropical rain forest have typically done so in two ways, viewing forests as either “evolutionary cradles” that encourage the rapid development…