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 conducted locally at Massachusetts General Hospital, Joslin Diabetes Center and Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, researchers will gain valuable information about the relationship between weight loss…
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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 then, Folkman and other researchers have sought a way to block the growth of cancer tumors through restricting or eliminating the small blood vessels that…
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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, resulting in ventricular dysfunction. Although heart transplantation has proven very successful, only a small number of organs are actually available for transplant each year. That’s…
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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 this crowning structure, neurons are guided by factors that are both genetic and environmental. A research team led by Christopher A. Walsh, the Bullard professor…
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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 pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess, puts it, there are no innocent bystanders in the process. “Previous research focused on the genetics of the cancer cell,”…
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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 rebuild the chromosome ends, which are called telomeres, in essence making cancer cells immortal. Since the discovery of the link between telomerase and cancer, scientists…
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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 is resistant to antibiotics. Researchers have worked to come up with better and more powerful antibiotics, but even an antibiotic such as vancomycin, which used…
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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 a region of human Chromosome 4 may help people to live to age 100 was something of a surprise. “This is the first study to…
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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 team of Harvard Medical School researchers says a better approach may be to enhance the activity of natural compounds that work to resolve an inflammation.…
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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 walk will reveal changes in the brain and body caused by aging and disease. To compile his gait analyses, Hausdorff uses mathematical tools used to…
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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 us come closer to understanding what makes us conscious human beings,” says researcher Alvaro Pascual-Leone. “We are able to reflect on ourselves and our actions.…
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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 into his chest and guided to the tumor by a scanning device. As Eric vanSonnenberg and his colleagues did the procedure, they could watch on…
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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 and nationally affiliated health care plans. These results are consistent with the growing number of other studies that have shown poorer performance in some aspects…
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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 received a new cancer vaccine. Another 25 percent showed encouraging shrinkage of large and small tumors. Some of the 75 people who have received the…