Tag: Disease

  • Nation & World

    Biology department evolves at FAS

    Earlier this month, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) made official what scientists worldwide have known for years: Harvard is a hotbed of research and teaching in the field of human evolutionary biology — the study of why we’re the way we are.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Embryo’s heartbeat drives blood stem cell formation

    Biologists have long wondered why the embryonic heart begins beating so early, before the tissues actually need to be infused with blood. Two groups of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston (Children’s) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) — presenting multiple lines of evidence from zebrafish, mice, and mouse embryonic stem…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Research funding

    RESEARCH FUNDING: Douglas A. Melton, Harvard College Professor, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences, investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Neglected diseases leave sufferers with few options

    Nicholas De Torrente was at Harvard as part of Harvard Global Health Day 2009, sponsored by the Harvard College Global Health and AIDS Coalition and the International Relations on Campus student groups.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Breast cancer danger rising in developing countries

    Women in developing nations, once thought to have a small chance of contracting breast cancer, are increasingly getting the disease as lifestyles incorporate risk factors common in industrialized nations, panelists at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) said Tuesday (April 14).

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Mogae shifts stress to HIV prevention

    An African leader whose anti-AIDS programs resulted in one of the continent’s few HIV success stories said Monday (April 13) that he is shifting his efforts from treatment toward prevention in hopes of creating an “HIV-free” generation.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A mother’s criticism strikes nerve

    Formerly depressed women show patterns of brain activity when they are criticized by their mothers that are distinctly different from the patterns shown by never-depressed controls, according to a new study from Harvard University. The participants reported being completely well and fully recovered, yet their neural activity resembled that which has been observed in depressed…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Fijian girls succumb to Western dysmorphia

    In 1982, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Anne E. Becker was still an undergraduate at Radcliffe when she traveled to Fiji for a summer of anthropology fieldwork. What struck her about this South Pacific island nation — and has in many research trips since — was “the absolute preoccupation with food and eating,” she said. “Family…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Study IDs human genes required for hepatitis C viral replicating

    Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new way to block reproduction of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) — targeting not the virus itself but the human genes the virus exploits in its life cycle. In the March 19 Cell Host & Microbe, they report finding nearly 100 genes that support the replication of…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Concentration in human development, regenerative biology added

    Inviting a new generation of scientists into the study of human development, disease, and aging, Harvard University will offer a new undergraduate concentration in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology (HDRB) starting this fall.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Vitamin B, folic acid may reduce risk of age-related vision loss

    New research from Brigham and Women’s Hospital finds that taking a combination of vitamins B6 and B12 and folic acid appears to decrease the risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in women. This research is published in the Feb. 23 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Low-income diabetic women at increased risk for postpartum depression

    Researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the University of Minnesota have found that living just above the poverty line and having diabetes increases by 50 percent a woman’s chance of developing postpartum depression — a serious illness that affects about one in 10 new mothers.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Gene therapy demonstrates benefit in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

    Researchers have reported the first clinical evidence that gene therapy reduces symptoms in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an important milestone for this promising treatment . Described in the February issue of the journal Human Gene Therapy, the findings stem from a study of two patients with severe rheumatoid arthritis conducted in Germany and led…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Blavatnik Family Foundation gives Harvard $10M

    The Blavatnik Family Foundation, headed by Len Blavatnik, M.B.A. ’89, has given Harvard University two gifts totaling $10 million in support of its scientific and technological research. Half the gift will go to the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT to support cancer vaccine research, and half will go to the…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    $100 million gift to launch innovative search for AIDS vaccine

    Medical School Professor Bruce Walker has been selected as the founding director of a unique new $100 million effort to finally develop a vaccine that can halt the global HIV/AIDS pandemic that, if it continues unchecked, is predicted to claim an additional 70 million lives by 2020.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Researchers replicate ALS process in lab dish

    A Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) research team has succeeded in deriving spinal motor neurons from human embryonic stem cells, and has then used them to replicate the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) disease process in a laboratory dish.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Rights, AIDS, past and future

    Sixty years after the United Nations declared health care a basic human right, the AIDS epidemic highlights how much work remains to be done as the disease rages on among populations with little access to quality care.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Research may lead to treatment for retinitis pigmentosa

    Rods and cones coexist peacefully in healthy retinas. Both types of cells occupy the same layer of tissue and send signals when they detect light, which is the first step in vision.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Early success highlights need for more progress

    Many of the 500,000 African babies born infected with HIV each year won’t live past age 2, a fact made even more appalling by the fact that doctors know how to halt mother-to-child HIV transmission.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Cutler finds decline in cancer deaths

    Improvements in behavior and screening have contributed greatly to the 13 percent decline in cancer mortality since 1990, with better cancer treatments playing a supporting role, according to new research from David Cutler of Harvard University.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HUHS to offer flu vaccination clinics through November

    Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) will conduct free vaccination clinics throughout November. The clinics will be open to the entire Harvard University community every Monday and Tuesday (noon-3 p.m.) at HUHS on the second floor of the Holyoke Center (Monks Library).

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Genetic screening no better than traditional risk factors for predicting type 2 diabetes

    Screening for a panel of gene variants associated with the risk for type 2 diabetes can identify adults at risk for the disorder but is not significantly better than assessment based on traditional risk factors such as weight, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Anesthetic causes changes in mouse brains

    For the first time researchers have shown that a commonly used anesthetic can produce changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease in the brains of living mammals, confirming previous laboratory studies. In their Annals of Neurology report, which has received early online release, a team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators shows how administration of the gas…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    In brief

    Money Mondays offer help The Office of Human Resources will be offering a special series of “HARVie chats” on banking, benefits, investing, and other financial topics. Harvard staff are invited to visit http://harvie.harvard.edu/chats/upcomingchats.shtml to get information that may help in navigating through the current economic downturn.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Newsmakers

    Klaber selected for summit J.D./M.B.A. student Andrew Klaber has been selected as one of 160 emerging leaders from 30 countries in the Asia-Pacific region who will gather at the Four Seasons Hotel in Tokyo for the Asia Society’s Third Annual Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Drug trial shows dramatic reduction in hidden heart disease

    A Harvard-led study shows that the risk of heart attack and stroke among subjects with “silent heart disease” — and normal cholesterol levels — can be dramatically reduced by the use of an already widely prescribed class of drugs.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Shore Fellowship affords breathing room

    The weekend was hectic for physician Rhonda Bentley-Lewis: two full days of activities, including her son’s birthday party. Then came the trip to the emergency room, not to attend to a patient, but to Christian, the 11-year-old birthday boy, and his broken wrist.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Researchers gain ground in treatment options for disfiguring tumor

    A team of researchers led by Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM) Dean for Research Bjorn Olsen has discovered a mechanism for the rapid growth seen in infantile hemangioma, the most common childhood tumor.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Gene therapy restores vision to mice with retinal degeneration

    Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have used gene therapy to restore useful vision to mice with degeneration of the light-sensing retinal rods and cones, a common cause of human blindness. Their report, appearing in the Oct. 14 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes the effects of broadly expressing a light-sensitive protein in other…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Global ‘chump change’ could provide biodiversity protection

    Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson said the Earth’s major biological hot spots could be conserved for roughly $50 billion— an amount he termed “chump change” in a world of trillion-dollar financial bailouts.

    5 minutes