Tag: Brigham and Women’s Hospital
-
Campus & Community
Popular hair-loss drug impedes prostate cancer detection in middle-aged men
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have found that the prostate specific antigen (PSA) cancer screening test is falsely lowered by a factor of two in middle-aged men who…
-
Health
Harvard researchers map new form of genetic diversity
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…
-
Campus & Community
Risk of breast cancer may be associated with red meat consumption
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have found that eating more red meat may be associated with a higher risk for hormone receptor–positive breast cancers in premenopausal women. This…
-
Campus & Community
Cells that work themselves to death
When you’re fighting flu or any other infection, your body mobilizes battalions of cells to defend against the invading viruses or bacteria. But once the invaders have been defeated and…
-
Campus & Community
Migraine auras and heart disease linked – risks high for women
Marsha T. saw the lights of pain coming. They flashed and zigzagged before her eyes. Her visual field shrank into a tunnel. A registered nurse, she knew what was next.…
-
Health
Study shows benefits of eating fish greatly outweigh risks
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…
-
Health
Prostate cancer treatment increases risk of diabetes, heart disease
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…
-
Health
Study offers new hope for preventive vaccine for AIDS
New research by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists suggests that it may one day be possible to immunize healthy individuals against HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS. In a study published…
-
Health
Potential Alzheimer’s vaccine improves learning and memory deficits in mice
Researchers have found that a vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease improves learning and memory deficits in mice. “Our findings show promise for a potentially safer and more effective Alzheimer’s vaccine in…
-
Health
Melatonin most effective for sleep when taken for off-hour sleeping
Researchers from the Divisions of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School have found in a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical study that melatonin, taken orally during non-typical…
-
Health
Sense of security may be false with tried and true anti-inflammatories
For all the tender joints and headaches they relieve and colon cancer they may prevent, the older nonsteroidal anti- inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) raise another serious health risk. The highly publicized…
-
Health
Prayers don’t help heart surgery patients
Many – if not most people – believe that prayer will help you through a medical crisis such as heart bypass surgery. If a large group of people outside yourself,…
-
Campus & Community
Exercise cuts risk of sudden cardiac death
Exercise improves your health, but can you kill yourself with too much snow shoveling, yard work, jogging, or playing tennis? “Despite all of the known benefits of exercise, there are…
-
Arts & Culture
Brigham pilot program connects people with family histories
A Harvard Medical School instructor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital is spearheading a pilot project to encourage Brigham employees to gather detailed family health histories to give health care officials an edge fighting inherited diseases.
-
Health
Lab moves genomic testing into the clinic
The earliest symptom of the inherited heart condition hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can be sudden death at a tragically young age. Harvard Medical School researchers discovered the first human gene underlying the…
-
Health
Moms who breastfeed may be protected from type 2 diabetes
Researchers have demonstrated that breastfeeding a child for one year may reduce a woman’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 15 percent. This study appeared in the Nov. 23,…
-
Campus & Community
‘Gold standard’ of dietary recommendations found
In the mid-1990s, researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Johns Hopkins University, and colleagues presented what is now considered a “gold standard” of dietary recommendations for reducing high…
-
Campus & Community
Waking up to how we sleep and dream
The Oct. 27, 2005 issue of the prestigious science journal Nature devotes almost 40 pages to bringing readers up-to-date on what happens during sleep. Three of the articles are by Harvard Medical School scientists who discuss such things as an on-off sleep switch, and learning while we sleep.
-
Campus & Community
Coffee gets cleared of blood pressure risk
Harvard researchers set out to test the idea that a lot of coffee isn’t good for your circulation. They followed 155,000 female nurses for 12 years, questioning them regularly about…
-
Health
Kids too often prescribed antibiotics for sore throat
Each year, millions of children visit their family physician or pediatrician seeking treatment for sore throats. While a sore throat could indicate many common illnesses, physicians are often most concerned…
-
Campus & Community
Bulyk searches for DNA on-off switches
Martha Bulyk held what looked like an ordinary glass slide up to the large window that is much of one wall of her Harvard Medical School office. The slide seemed…
-
Health
Gingko may prevent ovarian cancer
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have found initial laboratory and epidemiological evidence that, for the first time, demonstrates that ginkgo may help lower a woman’s risk of developing ovarian…
-
Health
Dietary fat intake linked to dry eye syndrome in women
Dry eye syndrome is characterized by a decline in the quality or quantity of tears that normally bathe the eye to keep it moist and functioning well. The condition causes…
-
Health
Special delivery brings fats to immune system
It was both unexpected and unsurprising when, in the mid -1990s, Michael Brenner, the Theodore Bevier Bayles professor of medicine, and his colleagues showed that some antigen- presenting cells display…
-
Health
Vaccine may clear Alzheimer’s brain plaques
While there is still no consensus about the role of waxy amyloid plaques that fill the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, many in the field believe they are a root cause…
-
Science & Tech
Implantable chips bear promise, but privacy standards needed
Writing in the July 28, 2005 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, John Halamka, M.D., chief information officer at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School and an emergency room…
-
Campus & Community
Risk of sudden cardiac death is highest in the early period following a heart attack
Even with modern medical treatment, patients who have experienced a heart attack remain at increased risk for sudden death after they are discharged from the hospital. In an effort to…
-
Campus & Community
New route to cell death found
Damaged or unusable cells in our bodies will commit suicide to protect us from harm. That’s a well-known process with the awkward name of “apoptosis.” There’s also necrosis, meaning “to…
-
Health
Home from the hospital: almost half of patients are discharged with test results still pending
According to Christopher Roy, M.D., a hospitalist at BWH who studies patient safety, “We found that while approximately half of the patients in this study had test results that were…
-
Health
Bacterium proves essential to immune system development
In the July 15, 2005 Cell, a team led by Dennis Kasper, the William Ellery Channing Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of microbiology and molecular…