Featured series 
Tag: Gynecology
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Health
How Lucy, Betsey, and Anarcha became foremothers of gynecology
Hutchins exhibit, “A Narrative of Reverence to Our Foremothers in Gynecology,” centers around lives of three enslaved women who underwent unspeakable experiments without anesthesia for J. Marion Sims.
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Science & Tech
Robotic radical hysterectomy has advantages
New technologies now allow surgery to be performed with less impact on patient quality of life. As the trend toward minimally invasive surgery grows, robotic-assisted surgery has become an appealing tool for gynecologic oncology surgeons. However, to date, there is little data to confirm the benefits of this technology. New research from Brigham and Women’s…
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Health
Survey finds disconnect between sexual problems in women and feeling of distress
The largest such study ever published finds that, although about 40 percent of women surveyed report having sexual problems, only 12 percent indicate that those issues are a source of significant personal distress. The report, led by a Harvard Medical School(HMS) physician at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), appears in the current issue of Obstetrics &…
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Health
Changes in diet and lifestyle may help prevent infertility
Women who followed a combination of five or more lifestyle factors, including changing specific aspects of their diets, experienced more than 80 percent less relative risk of infertility due to ovulatory disorders compared to women who engaged in none of the factors.
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Health
RNAi solution knocks down herpes infection
Ever since RNA interference hit the scene a few years ago as a way to selectively turn off gene expression, researchers have been investigating whether these small but powerful bits of RNA can be used as therapies. The problem has been delivery – how to get the RNA into the cell where it can silence…
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Health
Gene expression profiling helps in ovarian cancer prognosis
Steven A. Cannistra, M.D., director of Gynecologic Medical Oncology at BIDMC and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, says ovarian cancer is often not detectable until its later stages. At that point, he adds, doctors typically use clinical data to assess a patient’s prognosis and determine her course of therapy, a method that…
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Science & Tech
New approach to cervical cancer screening could save lives
When caught early through a Pap test, cervical cancer is almost 100 percent preventable, with treatment of precancers. Compared with current practice, shifting women currently getting annual conventional Pap tests to a schedule of Pap tests once every three years (using a new liquid-based technology that allows for extraction of DNA from cells taken in…
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Health
Sorting good eggs from bad ones
An oocyte is an immature egg cell in the ovaries. Before a woman is born, her ovaries will contain about five million eggs. At birth, about three million of those egg cells die — apparently by committing suicide. This fact of nature has long puzzled scientists. Now, Harvard researchers working at the Center for Blood…
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Health
Cell death in eggs traced to smoking
A woman is born with just so many egg cells, called oocytes. When she begins ovulating, she has about 400. Even though that may seem like a lot, considering the few that would ever be fertilized, scientists have found that loss of oocytes influences a woman’s health. Early loss of oocytes leads to early menopause…