Featured series 
Tag: Harvard Medical School
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Health
Discovery could aid fight against cystic fibrosis infection
Harvard Medical School researchers have discovered one way that a hardy disease-causing bacteria could be surviving in the lungs of chronically infected cystic fibrosis patients. “This work is important because pathogenic bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa use protein secretion systems to cause disease in their hosts,” said Joseph Mougous, lead author of the study published…
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Health
Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers granted approval
After more than two years of intensive ethical and scientific review, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers at Harvard and Children’s Hospital Boston have been cleared to begin experiments using Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) to create disease-specific stem cell lines in an effort to develop treatments for a wide range of now-incurable conditions afflicting…
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Campus & Community
Sunshine may help prevent breast cancer
Evidence is piling up that boosting vitamin D intake may help prevent breast cancer. One major study of 1,760 women found that the higher the levels of vitamin D in a woman’s blood, the less the risk of breast cancer. Those who boasted the highest levels (more than 52 nanograms per liter) cut their risk…
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Campus & Community
Study: Hope alive for AIDS vaccine
Researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School (HMS) have prompted human immune cells to attack HIV protein fragments, showing that the long-sought vaccine to protect against AIDS is still a possibility. Researchers using advanced data-analysis programs identified five protein fragments from HIV – the virus that causes AIDS – that promote a…
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Health
New data finds defibrillator recalls to be common
Data presented May 19, 2006 at the Heart Rhythm Society’s 27th Annual Scientific Sessions finds that during a 10-year study period more than one in five automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) were recalled due to potential malfunction. The findings represent some of the first data available on safety and reliability of the devices, which are used…
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Health
Schepens scientists first to discover angiogenesis switch inside blood vessel cells
Scientists at Schepens Eye Research Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, are the first to discover a switch inside blood vessel cells that controls angiogenesis (new blood vessel growth). The switch, they learned, is turned on and off by the balance between two enzymes (known as PI3K and PLCg) that compete for the use…
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Health
Study offers new hope for preventive vaccine for AIDS
New research by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists suggests that it may one day be possible to immunize healthy individuals against HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS. In a study published in the online journal Medical Immunology, investigators led by Dana-Farber’s Pedro Reche, Ph.D., and Derin Keskin, Ph.D., upend the long-held view that human immune system…
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Campus & Community
Did ancestral humans, chimps interbreed?
New scientific findings indicate that ancestral humans split from chimpanzee forebears more recently than previously thought and raise the possibility that the two nascent species hybridized before making their final separation.
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Campus & Community
HMS researchers isolate nerve growth compound
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston have isolated a molecule that stimulates the regrowth of damaged adult nerve fibers, providing new hope for those suffering from nerve damage and from neurodegenerative diseases. Adult nerve fibers in the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerve – all parts of the central nervous system –…
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Health
Study shows different insulin signaling components control glucose and lipid metabolism in the liver
Insulin uses two distinct mechanisms to control glucose and the metabolism of blood fats (lipids) in the liver, a new Joslin Diabetes Center-led study has discovered. Failures in each of these networks can lead to serious health problems: the breakdown of glucose metabolism that can lead to type 2 diabetes, and the malfunction of lipid…
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Health
New combination of treatments is effective for alcohol dependence
McLean Hospital researchers, along with colleagues from 11 other study sites nationwide, report that the medication naltrexone and up to 20 sessions of alcohol counseling delivered by a behavioral specialist are equally effective treatments for alcohol dependence when delivered with structured medical management in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Results from the National…
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Health
Potential Alzheimer’s vaccine improves learning and memory deficits in mice
Researchers have found that a vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease improves learning and memory deficits in mice. “Our findings show promise for a potentially safer and more effective Alzheimer’s vaccine in humans,” says senior researcher and Harvard Medical School associate professor Cynthia Lemere. Lemere and colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital report combined immunological, neuropathological, and…
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Health
Melatonin most effective for sleep when taken for off-hour sleeping
Researchers from the Divisions of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School have found in a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical study that melatonin, taken orally during non-typical sleep times, significantly improves an individual’s ability to sleep. This finding is particularly important for rotating or night-shift workers, travelers with jet lag and individuals…
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Health
Researchers learn more about ways to regenerate the ear’s hearing cells
Massachusetts General Hospital researchers have made important progress in their ongoing effort to regenerate the inner ear’s hair cells, which convert sound vibrations to nerve impulses. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they report successfully creating a mouse model that allows them to build on earlier findings about the effect of deactivating…
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Campus & Community
Mad cow protein found to have a sane side
It’s a devastating disease, changing behavior, causing uncontrolled movements, blindness, coma, and, finally, death. And we all have the makings of it in our heads. When it topples cows, it’s known as mad cow disease. The human form is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In sheep, it’s scrapie. It’s a rare malady caused by a misshapen protein…
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Health
Bone-marrow-derived stem cells can reverse genetic kidney disease
The discovery that bone-marrow derived stem cells can regenerate damaged renal cells in an animal model of Alport syndrome provides a potential new strategy for managing this inherited kidney disease and offers the first example of how stem cells may be useful in repairing basement membrane matrix defects and restoring organ function. Led by researchers…
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Health
Attention shoppers: Researchers find neurons that encode the value of different goods
Researchers at Harvard Medical School report in the April 23, 2006 issue of Nature that they have identified neurons that encode the values that subjects assign to different items. The activity of these neurons might facilitate the process of decision-making that occurs when someone chooses between different goods. “We have long known that different neurons…
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Health
Sense of security may be false with tried and true anti-inflammatories
For all the tender joints and headaches they relieve and colon cancer they may prevent, the older nonsteroidal anti- inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) raise another serious health risk. The highly publicized danger of heart attacks and other cardiovascular side effects first discovered in randomized control trials of newer, selective NSAIDs are being found in the older…
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Science & Tech
Discovery of calcium channel protein illuminates T cell signaling
A rare genetic defect in a family has helped researchers identify a key signaling component in T cells. The newly identified protein, Orai1, may be a piece of a long- sought calcium channel in T cells that is critical for lymphocyte function. When two siblings inherited two copies of a mutant form of Orai1, it…
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Health
Advances in chemotherapy improve outcomes in select breast cancers
Recent advances in chemotherapy have significantly reduced the risk of disease recurrence and death in breast cancer patients whose tumors are not hormone sensitive, according to a study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and 10 other institutions. The findings were reported in the April 12, 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Medical…
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Health
Prayers don’t help heart surgery patients
Many – if not most people – believe that prayer will help you through a medical crisis such as heart bypass surgery. If a large group of people outside yourself, your family, and your friends joined in intercessory prayer, that should be even more helpful, so such reasoning goes. Researchers have been trying to prove…
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Science & Tech
Researchers create pigs that produce omega-3 fatty acids
Researchers report they have created pigs that produce omega -3 fatty acids, which are known to improve heart function and help reduce the risks for heart disease, representing the first cloned transgenic livestock in the world that can make the beneficial compound. The research could be a boost to both farmers and health-conscious consumers seeking…
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Science & Tech
Child enrichment program still pays off after 15 years
Researchers have detected the lasting benefits of early childhood education 15 years after the program ended. What may have seemed like three years of fun and games at the time for the low-birth weight, premature infants translated into higher achievement scores in math and reading for the intervention group at age 18. They also tended…
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Campus & Community
Exercise cuts risk of sudden cardiac death
Exercise improves your health, but can you kill yourself with too much snow shoveling, yard work, jogging, or playing tennis? “Despite all of the known benefits of exercise, there are also well-documented associations between acute episodes of exertion and sudden cardiac death,” notes Christine Albert, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Although…
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Health
Getting ACL tears to heal themselves
Orthopedic surgeon Martha Murray reports that a collagen gel enriched with blood platelets can stimulate natural healing of a partial anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear. Murray and colleagues at Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital Boston found the gel can help regenerate the knee ligament and restore mechanical strength. Their findings are preliminary, but could lead to a…
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Health
Enzyme key in preventing Alzheimer’s onset
A new discovery has found that Pin1, an enzyme previously shown to prevent the formation of the tangle-like lesions found in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients, also plays a pivotal role in guarding against the development of amyloid peptide plaques, the second brain lesion that characterizes Alzheimer’s. These new findings, shown in an animal…