Tag: Children’s Hospital Boston
-
Nation & World
An existing diuretic may suppress seizures in newborns
A diuretic drug called bumetanide may serendipitously help treat seizures in newborns, which are difficult to control with existing anticonvulsants, according to a study in the November 2005 Nature Medicine.…
-
Nation & World
Work progressing on Alzheimer’s, but too slowly
Actor David Hyde Pierce made an emotional plea for increased activism around Alzheimer’s disease Monday (Oct. 17), saying that federal funding has leveled off despite scientific progress in understanding and…
-
Nation & World
Double trouble: Cells with duplicate genomes can trigger tumors
So-called “double-value” cells are produced by random errors in cell division that occur with unknown frequency. The generation of these genetically unstable cells appears to be a “pathway for generating…
-
Nation & World
Learning how the SARS virus spikes its quarry
Structural images that show how the SARS virus’s spike protein grasps its receptor may help scientists learn new details about how the virus infects cells and could also help in…
-
Nation & World
A new look at anemia
Leonard Zon and his colleagues at the Harvard Medical School were trying to find out how hemoglobin forms by studying zebrafish, small piscians whose transparent bodies allow their inner workings…
-
Nation & World
Blood vessel drugs halt cancer growth
After decades of surviving peer rejection of his theory of cancer treatment by blocking tiny blood vessels, Judah Folkman has gone on to develop drugs that did what he predicted…
-
Nation & World
Urine test may help monitor disfiguring birthmarks
Vascular anomalies include both vascular malformations and vascular tumors (most commonly hemangiomas). Hemangiomas, found in about 10 percent of infants, occur when the cells lining blood vessels multiply abnormally. Hemangiomas…
-
Nation & World
Child early intervention programs make for healthier adults
The Brookline Early Education Program (BEEP), a community- based child health and development program, was initiated by the Brookline Public Schools and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and ran from…
-
Nation & World
‘Brown fat’ cells hold clues for possible obesity treatments
In laboratory studies of mouse cells, the research team identified genes that govern how precursor cells give rise to mature brown fat cells. There are two main types of fat…
-
Nation & World
Breathing restored after severe spinal-cord injury
Keeping an animal functioning after a cervical spinal cord injury is nearly impossible. An American researcher developed the lower spinal cord rat model in the early 1900s. He found that…
-
Nation & World
Broken hearts may mend after all
Although adult muscle cells become inflexible after differentiation, these cells temporarily loosen the structure to divide in fetal development. Mark T. Keating found that in some lower vertebrates, heart tissue…
-
Nation & World
Breathing easier after spinal cord injuries
njuries to the upper spinal cord can take a victim’s breath away. Most people don’t know that breathing difficulties are the leading cause of disease and death after such injuries.…
-
Nation & World
Left- or right-brain? Genes may tell the story
According to HHMI investigator Christopher A. Walsh, postdoctoral fellow Tao Sun, and their colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, their discovery that a gene called…
-
Nation & World
Researchers induce heart cells to proliferate
In the best-documented effort to date, researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School have successfully induced adult heart-muscle cells to divide and…
-
Nation & World
Message to marathoners: Watch your fluid intake!
The study singled out substantial weight gain while running, long race duration, and a lower body mass index as the primary risk factors for hyponatremia in runners. Researchers suggest that…
-
Nation & World
Simple tools can reduce transmission
Viral upper respiratory and gastrointestinal infections are the two most common illnesses that occur in children enrolled in day care, and secondary attack rates within families can be as high…
-
Nation & World
Spread of common day care illnesses caused by misconceptions about illness transmission
A Harvard Medical School study found that only two-thirds of parents believed that contact transmission was important for the spread of colds, and fewer than half believed it was important…
-
Nation & World
New findings about protection against pneumococcal disease
Before the advent of the pneumococcal vaccine, known as Prevnar, S. pneumoniae caused millions of ear infections each year, half a million episodes of bacterial pneumonia, and life- threatening cases…
-
Nation & World
Mystery of how lungs grow is solved
The puzzle of how lungs grow has been solved. Scientists watching the process in mice embryos have found that budding and branching of new air sacs is driven by the…
-
Nation & World
Researchers find better way to predict stroke risk in sickle cell anemia patients
Researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Harvard Medical School have developed a novel…
-
Nation & World
High cholesterol levels accelerate growth of prostate cancer
The findings, published in the April 1, 2005 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, are in keeping with population studies that have linked prostate cancer with high cholesterol levels.…
-
Nation & World
Explosion of child obesity predicted to shorten U.S. life expectancy
A review by obesity researcher David Ludwig of Children’s Hospital Boston, epidemiologist S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and colleagues concludes that obesity now reduces average…
-
Nation & World
Weight status of children ages 8 to 15 predicts obesity and high blood pressure in adulthood
“We have known that kids who are overweight or obese have a higher risk for being overweight or obese as adults. But in this paper, we show that even children…
-
Nation & World
Blood system forms in the placenta
Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) report a surprising finding about embryonic development: The blood system begins to form not only in the embryo itself,…
-
Nation & World
Survey: Down syndrome diagnoses found wanting
A survey of mothers in the March issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that obstetricians and genetic counselors are falling short when it comes to delivering…
-
Nation & World
Scientists reveal key clue to how HIV infects cells
Harvard researchers have shown for the first time the critical “before” structure of an AIDS virus protein that plays a key role in the virus’ infection of cells. The protein,…
-
Nation & World
Urine test tracks deadly birthmarks
Although not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration, results from simple urine tests are already being used to guide treatment of children with disfiguring birthmarks and adults with…
-
Nation & World
Tiny RNA molecules fine-tune the brain’s synapses
Non-coding regions of the genome – those that don’t code for proteins – are now known to include important elements that regulate gene activity. Among those elements are microRNAs, tiny,…
-
Nation & World
Disparate proteins structurally identical
Gerhard Wagner, the Elkan Blout professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology, and Tucker Collins, the S. Burt Wolbach professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital, made…
-
Nation & World
Researchers discover why we go gray
People turn gray, Harvard scientists found, when certain adult stem cells gradually die off. The stem cells provide a continuous supply of other, pigment-producing cells that give your hair its…