Featured series 
Tag: Harvard Medical School
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Health
Hearing could hold key to unlocking schizophrenia mystery
Measuring brain waves in response to hearing a variety of tones appears to be a useful way to begin understanding the underlying genetic abnormalities associated with schizophrenia, says a study headed by researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital. In the paper “Reductions in the N1 and P2 Auditory Event-Related Potentials in First-Hospitalized and Chronic Schizophrenia,” available…
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Health
Blumenthal named national coordinator for health information technology
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today (March 20) the selection of David Blumenthal as the Obama administration’s choice for national coordinator for health information technology. A physician at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Blumenthal is also director of the MGH Institute for Health Policy and Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine…
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Science & Tech
Researchers find majority of fire and ambulance recruits overweight or obese
Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), Boston Medical Center, Harvard University, and Cambridge Health Alliance found that more than 75 percent of emergency responder candidates for fire and ambulance services in Massachusetts are either overweight or obese. The findings, which appear online today (March 19) in the journal Obesity, have significant consequences for…
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Health
Study identifies human genes required for hepatitis C viral replication
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…
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Science & Tech
Link found between religious belief, intensive medical care at end of life
In a new study of terminally ill cancer patients, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that those who draw on religion to cope with their illness are more likely to receive intensive, life-prolonging medical care as death approaches — treatment that often entails a lower quality of life in patients’ final days. Previous research showed…
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Health
Defibrillators may have little benefit for older, sicker patients
Defibrillators are commonly recommended to patients with heart failure to prevent sudden cardiac death, but beyond having heart failure, there is a lack of criteria to identify the appropriate patients for this therapy. Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) found that older people with comorbidities and those with multiple hospital admissions related to heart…
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Health
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 Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, finds that glass-table injuries aren’t as rare as one might think, and that many could have been…
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Health
Obesity linked to dangerous sleep apnea in truck drivers
Truck crashes are a significant public health hazard, causing thousands of deaths and injuries each year, with driver fatigue and sleepiness being major causes. A new study by Harvard researchers has confirmed previous findings that obesity-driven testing strategies identify commercial truck drivers with a high likelihood of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and suggests that mandating…
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Health
Blood type study sheds light on biology of pancreatic cancer
Offering a novel clue about the basic biology of pancreatic cancer, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have confirmed a decades-old discovery of a link between blood type and the risk of developing the disease. The finding, published online by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on March 10, is based on an analysis of…
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Health
Faculty approves undergraduate concentration in human developmental, regenerative biology
Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences late today voted to approve a new undergraduate concentration, or major, in Human Development and Regenerative Biology. One of the first of its kind in the nation, the new program will be available this fall to students starting with current freshman, the Class of 2012. The concentration will focus…
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Health
Higher temperatures lead to more severe headaches
Although large numbers of headache sufferers, particularly individuals who struggle with migraines, attribute their pain to the weather, there has been little scientific evidence to back up their assertions. Now, a study of more than 7,000 patients, led by Harvard researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), provides some of the first large-scale data…
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Health
End-of-life conversations associated with lower medical expenses
Few physicians are eager to discuss end-of-life care with their patients. Yet such conversations may result in better quality of life for patients and could lower national health care expenditures for cancer care alone by tens of millions of dollars each year, according to a study led by Harvard researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. As…
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Health
Taking a stride toward synthetic life
Harvard scientists have cleared a key hurdle in the creation of synthetic life, assembling a cell’s critical protein-making machinery in an advance with both practical, industrial applications and that advances the basic understanding of life’s workings. George Church, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School and member of Harvard’s Origins of Life Initiative, reported the…
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Health
Banking of umbilical cord blood has little physician support
A survey of physicians has found broad support for the position that parents should not bank their newborns’ umbilical cord blood in a private blood bank unless another member of the family is at risk for a blood disease that will require a stem cell transplant. The results of the survey are reported by Harvard…
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Science & Tech
Researchers find potential cause of heart risks for shift workers
Harvard researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and colleagues have identified the potential cause of the increased risk for cardiovascular and metabolic disease in shift workers. The researchers found that misalignment between the internal biological clock and the sleep/wake and fasting/feeding cycles, known as circadian misalignment, resulted in hormonal and metabolic changes that, if…
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Health
New ALS gene identified
A collaborative research effort spanning nearly a decade between Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and King’s College London (KCL) has identified a novel gene for inherited amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). This is the fourth gene associated with familial forms of the devastating neurological disorder. Two papers, published…
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Science & Tech
New committee to create University-wide conflict of interest policies and principles
A newly empaneled committee is about to begin an intensive review of University-wide conflict of interest (COI) “principles, policies and recommendations.” The committee, under the direction of David Korn, vice provost for research, is charged with examining “existing policies and practices governing individual and institutional relationships with industry, and formulat[ing] new principles and guidance for…
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Health
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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Health
Vitamin B and folic acid may reduce risk of age-related vision loss
Harvard Medical School (HMS) researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have found 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 today’s issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. “Women taking the supplements had a 34 percent…
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Health
Low-income women with diabetes 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. “While previous studies have linked diabetes and depression in…
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Health
Patients are untapped resource for improving care, study finds
A 15-month study of 21,860 patients and 110 primary care physicians at 11 Harvard Vanguard health centers found that patients who received mailed reminders that they were due for colorectal cancer screenings were more likely to schedule screenings than those who didn’t. Forty-four percent of patients who received a reminder in the mail got screened,…
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Health
Scientists identify antibodies effective against bird, seasonal flu viruses
Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Burnham Institute for Medical Research, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have reported the identification of human monoclonal antibodies (mAb) that neutralize an unprecedented range of influenza A viruses, including the avian influenza A (H5N1) virus, previous pandemic influenza viruses, and some seasonal influenza viruses. These…
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Science & Tech
Science, engineering programs advancing
Harvard President Drew Faust today renewed the University’s commitment to the vision of advancing interdisciplinary, collaborative science in general, and the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology (SCRB), the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering (WIBIE) in particular. “These important, forward-looking programs are vital to the future…
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Arts & Culture
The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century
Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz hold a microscope to loneliness, in part a symptom of our chaotic contemporary lifestyles, revealing the widespread effects of our disconnection and a culture that romanticizes autonomy.
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Health
Common gene variants increase risk of hypertension
A new study has identified the first common gene variants associated with an increased incidence of hypertension — a significant risk factor for heart attack, stroke, and kidney failure. The report, receiving early online release in the journal Nature Genetics, identifies variants in genes for proteins involved with cardiovascular response to stress that also appear…
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Health
Doctors override most electronic medication safety alerts
Computer-based systems that allow clinicians to prescribe drugs electronically are designed to automatically warn of potential medication errors, but a new study reveals clinicians often override the alerts and rely instead on their own judgment. The study, led by investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), suggests that most clinicians…
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Health
International study identifies gene variants associated with early heart attack
The largest study ever completed of genetic factors associated with heart attacks has identified nine genetic regions — three not previously described — that appear to increase the risk for early-onset myocardial infarction. The report from the Myocardial Infarction Genetics Consortium, based on information from a total of 26,000 individuals in 10 countries, was given…
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Health
Scientists uncover new class of mammalian genes with key functions
A research team at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has uncovered a vast new class of previously unrecognized mammalian genes that do not encode proteins, but instead function as long RNA molecules. Their findings, presented in the Feb. 1 advance online issue of the journal Nature, demonstrate…
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Health
Stem Cell Research: The Quest Resumes
“After eight years of political ostracism, stem-cell scientists like Harvard’s Douglas Melton are coming back into the light — and making discoveries that may soon bring lifesaving breakthroughs. Scientific inspiration can come from anywhere — a person, an event, even an experiment gone awry. But perhaps nothing can drive innovation more powerfully than the passion…