Featured series 
Tag: diseases and treatments
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Health
New drug dissolves stomach tumors
Since July 2000, Harvard and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researcher George Demetri and his colleagues have treated 148 patients with a rare, lethal stomach cancer known as GIST (Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor).…
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Health
A potential new anthrax therapy
A vaccine to protect humans against anthrax already exists, but since infection is rare, a widespread vaccination program is not practical. To be effective against anthrax, antibiotics must be given…
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Health
Caffeine linked to protection from Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s disease is a progressive nervous disease occurring generally after age 50. It destroys brain cells that produce dopamine and is characterized by muscular tremor, slowing of movement, weakness and…
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Health
Women’s menstrual cycle holds clue to cocaine response
During the first half of their menstrual cycles, when their estrogen levels are high, women are protected from the brain-damaging effects of cocaine use, according to a research study conducted…
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Health
Pain promoter plays unexpected role in central nervous system
Despite all the attention it draws in patients, pain has only in recent years been deemed a subject worthy of scientific scrutiny.
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Health
Accomplice fingered in cholera toxicity
A study published in March 2001 revealed one of the ways that cholera toxin hijacks some of the cell’s own machinery. In uncovering part of the toxin’s trail, a team…
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Health
Lyme disease vaccine found cost-effective only for those at high risk
Lyme disease, a bacterial infection transmitted through deer tick bites, is rapidly emerging in the U.S. and currently affects about 15,000 people each year. But incidence varies widely according to…
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Health
Growth factor seen to reverse loss of muscle from aging, disease
Previous work by Nadia Rosenthal of Harvard Medical School and her colleagues showed that injection of a virus directing the expression of a molecule known as insulin-like growth factor I…
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Science & Tech
Charles Rosenberg looks at changing perceptions of illness
In Charles Rosenberg’s eyes, epidemics tell us a great deal about American society. Rosenberg, considered by many to be the nation’s pre-eminent medical historian, was recently named Professor of the…
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Health
Cloak partly lifted on tiny Chlamydia
The Boston Public Health Commission released 1999 statistics showing 2 percent of the city’s 15- to 19-year-olds have chlamydia. Boston’s minority girls were reported to have infection rates of almost…
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Health
No link between hepatitis B vaccine and risk of multiple sclerosis
The French government in 1998 decided to temporarily suspend hepatitis B vaccine programs in schools after several cases of multiple sclerosis were reported a few weeks after the vaccine had…
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Health
Gene for familial dysautonomia discovered
Familial dysautonomia is a neurodegenerative disease that mainly targets Ashkenazi Jews. The disease, which affects one in every 3,600 members of this group, impairs the development of the sensory and…
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Health
Researchers see better treatments for cancer
“Before the development of insulin, diabetes was as deadly as many cancers are today,” says Harvard researcher Joseph Paul Eder, who is testing Endostatin on patients with advanced cancers. “In…
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Health
Treating ills with music
The Web site of the American Music Therapy Association lists 57 pages of research articles published in its Journal of Music Therapy and other publications. The articles chronicle successful use…
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Health
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…
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Health
Shorter treatment as effective, less costly in preventing HIV in babies
Of the more than 1,500 infants who get HIV from their infected mothers every day, 95 percent live in developing countries where the poverty level is high. Many mothers in…
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Health
Identifying the source of all disease
In a major leap toward learning the basics of human biology and what makes it go awry, Harvard researchers have built the prototype of a high-tech chip that rapidly identifies…
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Health
New treatment effective against psoriasis
Psoriasis is a skin disease that disfigures people’s bodies with scaly red plaques. Thirteen patients had portions of their psoriasis patches irradiated with intense beams of ultraviolet laser light at…
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Health
Study points to more targeted use of Ritalin
An area known as the putamen, located deep in the center of the brain, helps to control movement and attention. Harvard researchers believe that the putamen is involved in Attention…
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Health
Researchers face up to liars
What category of people do you think would be best at detecting lies? It’s not Secret Service agents, or psychiatrists, or even mothers. Investigators working at Massachusetts General Hospital in…
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Health
Public health researchers battle West Nile virus
West Nile encephalitis infection, carried by mosquitoes, can cause the brain to swell but rarely leads to death. Many people carry the virus with mild if any symptoms, but people…
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Science & Tech
Helping clear the air in China
Across China’s industrial areas, black soot settles into people’s lungs and bronchial tubes, producing an annual epidemic of respiratory disease. That’s the result of heating homes, schools, and offices with…
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Health
Shadow proteins in thymus may explain how immune system gets to know its own body
Researchers recently identified a protein that appears to work by turning on in the thymus, which lies beneath the breast bone, the production of a wide array of proteins from…