Tag: Children’s Hospital Boston
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Nation & World
Bringing new meaning to the term scientific paper
An insight from the labs of Harvard chemist George M. Whitesides and cell biologist Donald Ingber is likely to make a fundamental shift in how biologists grow and study cells…
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Nation & World
Three Harvard teams to receive $9 million each in federal funding for stem cell research
Three teams of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers are slated to receive $27 million over seven years in National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) grants for the development…
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Nation & World
Autism’s genetic roots examined in new government-funded study
Researchers at Harvard University and Children’s Hospital Boston will sequence the genomes of at least 85 people diagnosed with autism in a bid to tease out the genetic basis for some cases of the neuropsychiatric disorder.
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Nation & World
Researchers discover chemical that kills cancer stem cells
A multi-institutional team of Boston-area researchers has discovered a chemical that works in mice to kill the rare but aggressive cells within breast cancers that have the ability to seed…
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Nation & World
An unusual collection: A brain tumor tissue bank
Five years ago, as she was walking into Caritas Holy Family Hospital and Medical Center in Methuen, Mass., Patricia Fay saw a priest she knew and cornered him. “I’m like…
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Nation & World
Glimpsing the birth of our earliest reproductive cells
It has long been a mystery how the developing embryo designates those rare, precious cells destined to produce sperm and eggs — enabling us to have offspring – since these…
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Nation & World
A urine test for appendicitis?
Harvard researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston have identified a protein in the urine of appendicitis patients that they believe may provide the basis of a quick, noninvasive, accurate, and inexpensive test for the common condition.
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Nation & World
Researchers solve ‘bloodcurdling’ mystery
By applying cutting-edge techniques in single-molecule manipulation, researchers at Harvard University have uncovered a fundamental feedback mechanism that the body uses to regulate the clotting of blood. The finding, which…
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Nation & World
Researchers identify the brain’s on-off switch for fear
Harvard researchers at McLean Hospital have identified a particular protein in the brain that serves as a trigger for the body’s innate fear response. This discovery suggests a potential target…
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Nation & World
Predicting and tracking pandemics:
At the end of July 2008, major news agencies reported an outbreak of jalapeño-related salmonella that sickened more than 1,000 people in Mexico and the United States. It was the…
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Nation & World
Infant weight gain linked to childhood obesity
As childhood obesity continues its 30-year advance from occasional curiosity to cultural epidemic, health care providers are struggling to find out why — and the reasons are many. Increasingly sedentary…
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Nation & World
Mechanism directing stem cells to their destination identified;
Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have for the first time identified in mice a cellular mechanism that directs stem cells to their ultimate destination in the body. The finding…
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Nation & World
Glass tables: An overlooked safety threat
Many households harbor a threat to young children that safety regulations, surprisingly, have overlooked: glass-topped tables and tables with glass panels. A review by Children’s Hospital Boston, in collaboration with…
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Nation & World
Predicting risk of stroke from one’s genetic blueprint
A new statistical model could be used to predict an individual’s lifetime risk of stroke, according to the results of a study by Harvard researchers at the Children’s Hospital Boston Informatics Program.
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Nation & World
Topical treatment wipes out herpes with RNAi
Harvard Medical School researchers have succeeded in developing a topical treatment that, in mice, wipes out herpes virus, one of the most intractable sexually transmitted human diseases. Judy Lieberman, professor…
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Nation & World
Spinal tap unnecessary for most babies with uncomplicated febrile seizures
When babies develop a fever high or abrupt enough to cause a seizure, frightened parents often rush them to the emergency room, where their workup frequently includes a lumbar puncture…
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Nation & World
Obesity: Reviving the promise of leptin
The discovery more than a decade ago of leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone secreted by fat tissue, generated headlines and great hopes for an effective treatment for obesity. But hopes dimmed…
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Nation & World
Antacid medication in pregnancy may increase childhood asthma
Children of mothers who took acid-suppressive drugs during pregnancy had a 1.5 times higher incidence of asthma when compared with children who were not exposed to the drugs in utero,…
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Nation & World
Antacid use during pregnancy may increase childhood asthma
Children of mothers who took acid-suppressive drugs during pregnancy had a 1.5 times higher incidence of asthma when compared with children who were not exposed to the drugs in utero, finds a large population-based study by researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston. The findings, accompanied by an editorial, appear online this week in “Early View” in…
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Nation & World
New obesity-related genes identified
A large international consortium has made significant inroads into uncovering the genetic basis of obesity, adding six new genetic variants to the two already linked to higher body mass index (BMI) in previous studies. Most of the newly discovered genes had never before been suspected of having a role in body weight and, curiously, many…
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Nation & World
Daley and colleagues create 20 disease-specific stem cell lines
Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researcher George Q. Daley, associate director of the Stem Cell Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, has with HSCI colleagues Chad Cowan and Konrad Hochedlinger of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) produced a robust new collection of disease-specific stem cell lines, all of which were developed using the new induced pluripotent stem…
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Nation & World
Middle Eastern families yield intriguing clues to autism
Research involving large Middle Eastern families, sophisticated genetic analysis and groundbreaking neuroscience has implicated a half-dozen new genes in autism. More importantly, it strongly supports the emerging idea that autism…
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Nation & World
New source of heart stem cells discovered
Harvard Stem Cell Institute(HSCI) researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston are continuing to document the heart’s earliest origins. Now, they have pinpointed a new, previously unrecognized group of stem cells that…
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Nation & World
New report finds low vitamin D levels appear common in ‘healthy’ children
Many infants and toddlers may have low levels of vitamin D, and about one-third of those appear to have some evidence of reduced bone mineral content on X-rays, according to a report in the June issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
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Nation & World
Video game technology may help surgeons
In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) featured on the cover of this month’s Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, cardiac surgeons from Children’s Hospital Boston report good results with a simple technology borrowed from the gaming industry: stereo glasses.
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Nation & World
Video game technology may help surgeons operate on beating hearts
Surgery has been done inside some adults’ hearts while the heart is still beating, avoiding the need to open the chest, stop the heart and put patients on cardiopulmonary bypass.…
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Nation & World
NIH awards Harvard Medical School $117.5 million, five-year grant for patient-centered research
The National Institutes of Health today announced that Harvard Medical School (HMS) will receive $117.5 million over the next five years for the establishment of a Clinical and Translational Science…