Tag: Aging

  • Nation & World

    Defibrillators may have little benefit for older, sicker patients

    Defibrillators are commonly recommended to patients with heart failure to prevent sudden cardiac death, but beyond having heart failure, there is a lack of criteria to identify the appropriate patients…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Concentration in human development, regenerative biology added

    Inviting a new generation of scientists into the study of human development, disease, and aging, Harvard University will offer a new undergraduate concentration in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology (HDRB) starting this fall.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The third chapter can be the best in the book

    There may be something to the adage about growing older and wiser. A lot, in fact, according to the new book by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, “The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50,” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009). The work explores the trend of learning and development for adults who are…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    End-of-life conversations associated with lower medical expenses

    Few physicians are eager to discuss end-of-life care with their patients. Yet such conversations may result in better quality of life for patients and could lower national health care expenditures…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Vitamin B and folic acid may reduce risk of age-related vision loss

    Harvard Medical School (HMS) researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have found that taking a combination of vitamins B6 and B12 and folic acid appears to decrease the risk of…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Anesthetic causes changes in mouse brains

    For the first time researchers have shown that a commonly used anesthetic can produce changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease in the brains of living mammals, confirming previous laboratory studies. In their Annals of Neurology report, which has received early online release, a team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators shows how administration of the gas…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Eleven HILR students honored for dedication

    University Marshal Jackie O’Neill honored 11 members of the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement (HILR) last week for their dedication to lifelong learning. The April 4 ceremony was held at the Harvard Faculty Club and was attended by friends and family of the honorees, who are all near or actual nonagenarians. Also in attendance…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Brain systems less coordinated with age

    Some brain systems become less coordinated with age even in the absence of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study from Harvard University. The results help to explain why advanced age is often accompanied by a loss of mental agility, even in an otherwise healthy individual.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    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…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Labor and management, together at last

    Harvard University hosted “The Future of Labor Forum” last week (Oct. 2), a first-ever conference that brought together prominent voices from the sometimes adversarial worlds of management, unions, government, and the academy.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard researchers find longevity, restricted diet link

    Researchers believe they’ve found the cellular link between extremely restricted diets and dramatically lengthened lifespan and hope to use the knowledge to develop new treatments for age-related diseases.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New leadership fellowship program established

    A core of 13 faculty members is collaborating across disciplines to create a new Harvard fellowship program they say will harness a largely untapped universe of leadership skills.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Brain implants relieve Alzheimer’s damage

    Genetically engineered cells implanted in mice have cleared away toxic plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Broken hearts found to mend themselves

    Stem cells apparently try to mend hearts damaged by heart attacks or high blood pressure. But they do not refresh hearts run down by aging. Evidence for this heartening and disheartening news comes from experiments with mice done at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HILR to hold symposium on ‘Perspectives from the Future’

    The Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement (HILR), a leader among academic institutes for retirees, will present a daylong symposium titled “Perspectives from the Future: A Symposium on Tomorrow’s World as Defined by Today’s Research and Planning” on April 20 as part of its 30th anniversary celebration.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Finding the start of Alzheimer’s disease

    Faces are hard to remember. Even harder are the names that go with them. It’s one of the most common problems people face as they get older.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    MIND recognizes Cure Alzheimer’s Fund with first philanthropic award

    Established in 2001 by members of the Harvard Medical School faculty, the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease (MIND) recently recognized the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund with its first Philanthropic Innovation and Investment Award. The award recognizes donors who have made substantial commitments to visionary work that cannot be funded through other sources but has the potential…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Cocoa shows promise as next wonder drug

    A big problem facing Americans and Europeans is the dangerous rise in blood pressure with age, increasing their risk of heart disease and diabetes. Kuna Indians living off the Caribbean coast of Panama don’t have that problem. Norman Hollenberg, a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, is convinced that it’s because they drink more…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New findings may increase longevity of stem cells

    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…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HSCI/MGH researchers identify gene product involved in stem cell aging and death

    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…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Heat waves deadliest for blacks, diabetics

    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.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Meditation found to increase brain size

    People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don’t. Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Largest twin study of age-related macular degeneration finds genetics and environment play large role in disease

    Researchers led by Johanna M. Seddon, M.D., at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health conducted the largest study of twins of…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Adding years to your life

    A research team did the first global study of the potential increase in life expectancy if 20 well-known risk factors could be eliminated or reduced to safer levels. These factors…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Eating less and living longer

    Tantalizing evidence exists that cutting calories by 20 percent helps monkeys, who are close relatives, to live longer, healthier lives. And, in one nonscientific program, adults are reducing their caloric…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Incidence of hip fractures reduced by walking

    In the United States, one in every three adults 65 years old or older falls each year, with hip fractures resulting in the greatest number of deaths and most serious…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Researchers eye earliest triggers of age-related macular degeneration

    Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness for Americans over 60 years of age. It affects more than 14 million people. But how it attacks the macula, the…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Harvard scientists identify chromosome location of genes associated with long life

    Scientists have long thought of aging as a complex process affected by perhaps a thousand genes. So a recent discovery by Harvard scientists that a gene or genes located on…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Growth factor seen to reverse loss of muscle from aging, disease

    Previous work by Nadia Rosenthal of Harvard Medical School and her colleagues showed that injection of a virus directing the expression of a molecule known as insulin-like growth factor I…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    First indications that aging may be regulated by brain

    A little worm called Caenorhabditis elegans was the first creature to have all its genes sequenced, more than 19,000 of them. When the human genome was sequenced, researchers found that…

    1 minute