Featured series 
Tag: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
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Health
Can weight loss decrease heart disease in type 2 diabetes?
Can weight loss decrease heart disease in type 2 diabetes? That’s the question being asked by Harvard researchers and others based at three Boston medical centers. In a nationwide study…
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Researchers explain how protein inhibits growth of blood vessels
Thirty years ago, Judah Folkman, of Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, first developed the idea that cancerous tumors are dependent on the growth of small blood vessels. Since…
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Study finds embryonic stem cells can repair heart muscle
Heart failure develops when the heart stops pumping effectively due to the destruction of muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes. Damage inflicted during a heart attack causes massive loss of cardiomyocytes,…
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“Commoner” in brain crowns the cortex
With its role in higher cognitive functions, the cortex represents a significant evolutionary development in mammals, culminating in the enlarged hemispheres of humans and other primates. In the development of…
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Health
No innocent bystanders
When cancer cells begin to do their destructive work, they have accomplices — normal cells that help nourish the cancerous ones. As Jack Lawler, Harvard Medical School associate professor of…
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Health
Cell protein potently blocks enzyme linked to cancer
The ends of chromosomes in normal cells eventually unravel, causing the cells to die. This does not happen in cancer cells, however. Cancer cells use an enzyme named telomerase to…
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Health
Resistance to antibodies is reversed
It’s a frightening — and increasingly common — problem. A patient seeks treatment for a particular ailment in a hospital and develops an entirely different disease: a bacterial infection that…
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Health
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…
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Health
Inflammatory villain turns do-gooder
Many drugs try to tame inflammation by inhibiting molecular events occurring at the beginning of the body’s own immune response. But that may thwart the body’s attempt to heal. A…
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Walking rhythm offers gait-way to reduce falls
Over the past 10 years, Jeffrey Hausdorff has studied thousands of steps from hundreds of feet. The Harvard Medical School assistant professor says that complex patterns hidden in an ordinary…
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Health
Scientists look people in the ‘I’
Harvard researchers seek a scientific answer to a question posed by 16th century philosopher René Descartes: “What is this ‘I’ that I know?” “Understanding the brain essence of self-awareness helps…
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Surgery without scalpels
Paul Simmons, a 29-year-old Maine farmer, suffered from a lung tumor. In February 2001, at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a probe containing a long needle was inserted…
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Medicare patients give higher overall marks to nonprofit health plans
The first large-scale national study that examines the relationship between health plan characteristics and patient ratings of their plan found that Medicare patients prefer not-for-profit or local plans over for-profit…
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Health
New cancer vaccine being tested
In studies at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, tumors were eliminated in 25 percent of patients with widespread kidney and lethal skin cancers who…