Featured series 
Tag: Harvard Medical School
-
Campus & Community
Bulyk searches for DNA on-off switches
Martha Bulyk held what looked like an ordinary glass slide up to the large window that is much of one wall of her Harvard Medical School office. The slide seemed…
-
Campus & Community
HapMap reveals roots of common diseases
The genes that everyone inherits contain coded information that influences which diseases any individual is most at risk of getting. Countless studies show that small variations in genes play a…
-
Science & Tech
Study shows escalating climate change impacts
The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, along with co-sponsors Swiss Re and the United Nations Development Programme, has released a study showing that climate…
-
Health
Gingko may prevent ovarian cancer
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have found initial laboratory and epidemiological evidence that, for the first time, demonstrates that ginkgo may help lower a woman’s risk of developing ovarian…
-
Health
Barrier found to nerve regeneration
Scientists have long dreamed of prompting adult neurons of the central nervous system to regenerate. But these cells have the deck stacked against them in several ways. Molecules from the…
-
Health
An existing diuretic may suppress seizures in newborns
A diuretic drug called bumetanide may serendipitously help treat seizures in newborns, which are difficult to control with existing anticonvulsants, according to a study in the November 2005 Nature Medicine.…
-
Science & Tech
First edition of HapMap released
A flurry of high-profile scientific manuscripts published in October 2005 describe both the content and uses of HapMap, a catalog that maps human genetic variation and relates it both to…
-
Campus & Community
Preparing the first ‘Who’s Who in Proteins’
Proteins gone wrong cause most human diseases. Find these mutated proteins, scientists reason, and they are on the way to predicting who will get what disease. They would also learn…
-
Health
Dietary fat intake linked to dry eye syndrome in women
Dry eye syndrome is characterized by a decline in the quality or quantity of tears that normally bathe the eye to keep it moist and functioning well. The condition causes…
-
Health
Herceptin treatment lowers recurrence rate in early breast cancer
Encouraging findings came from an interim report from HERA, an ongoing large, international clinical trial of Herceptin, published Oct. 19, 2005 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The analysis…
-
Health
Special delivery brings fats to immune system
It was both unexpected and unsurprising when, in the mid -1990s, Michael Brenner, the Theodore Bevier Bayles professor of medicine, and his colleagues showed that some antigen- presenting cells display…
-
Health
Vaccine may clear Alzheimer’s brain plaques
While there is still no consensus about the role of waxy amyloid plaques that fill the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, many in the field believe they are a root cause…
-
Health
Brain injury reversed in animal model of AIDS
Depending on the circumstances, missing N-acetylaspartate (NAA) in the brain may indicate Alzheimer’s disease, ischemic stroke, a brain tumor, or traumatic injury. And, as doctors soon learned with the AIDS…
-
Campus & Community
Holding their breath for the breathless
Two researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) got the idea of studying free divers to get information that would help them help the breathless to breathe better.…
-
Health
Double trouble: Cells with duplicate genomes can trigger tumors
So-called “double-value” cells are produced by random errors in cell division that occur with unknown frequency. The generation of these genetically unstable cells appears to be a “pathway for generating…
-
Campus & Community
Magnetic stimulation helps stroke victims
Felipe Fregni, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School, has used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to improve the movement skills of people whose brains have been damaged by strokes, skills that…
-
Health
Stroke patients with mild symptoms may still need clot- dissolving drug
“Our primary finding was that about 30 percent of those patients judged ‘too good to treat’ either died or were discharged to a rehabilitation facility,” says Eric Smith, MD, FRCPC,…
-
Campus & Community
And the survey says: Harvard docs practice what they preach
Do Harvard doctors practice what they preach? The Harvard Health Letter, the country’s first health newsletter for the general public, recently surveyed more than 15,000 Harvard Medical School faculty physicians…
-
Health
Learning how the SARS virus spikes its quarry
Structural images that show how the SARS virus’s spike protein grasps its receptor may help scientists learn new details about how the virus infects cells and could also help in…
-
Campus & Community
Chimp genome effort shines light on human evolution
A research effort, led by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and the University of Washington, Seattle, focused…
-
Science & Tech
Genome scanning technique spots disease risk
A new technique, admixture mapping, takes advantage of the higher-risk genetic segments from one population that show up in the other through generations of racial mixing. The presence of higher-risk…
-
Campus & Community
A new look at anemia
Leonard Zon and his colleagues at the Harvard Medical School were trying to find out how hemoglobin forms by studying zebrafish, small piscians whose transparent bodies allow their inner workings…
-
Health
Depression linked to previously unknown dopamine regulator
Li-Huei Tsai, Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor of pathology, HMS research fellow Sang Ki Park, and colleagues worked with mice and found a novel function for the molecule Par-4 (prostate…
-
Science & Tech
Harvard, MGH researchers track egg cell production to marrow
In a series of experiments on sterile female mice, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers were able to restore egg production by transplanting bone marrow from fertile mice. The researchers believe…
-
Health
Critical step traced in anthrax infection
An anthrax bacterium secretes three nontoxic proteins that assemble into a toxic complex on the surface of the host cell to set off a chain of events leading to cell…
-
Science & Tech
Implantable chips bear promise, but privacy standards needed
Writing in the July 28, 2005 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, John Halamka, M.D., chief information officer at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School and an emergency room…
-
Campus & Community
New route to cell death found
Damaged or unusable cells in our bodies will commit suicide to protect us from harm. That’s a well-known process with the awkward name of “apoptosis.” There’s also necrosis, meaning “to…
-
Health
Home from the hospital: almost half of patients are discharged with test results still pending
According to Christopher Roy, M.D., a hospitalist at BWH who studies patient safety, “We found that while approximately half of the patients in this study had test results that were…
-
Health
Molecular middleman puts thyroid hormone in developmental signaling pathway
Tissues such as muscle and brain convert the inactive form of thyroid hormone, T4, into T3, the active form of thyroid hormone, when necessary. In the 1980s, researchers discovered that…
-
Health
Study shows new compound may reduce risk of vision loss in patients with diabetes
The PKC-Diabetic Retinopathy Study (DRS) was designed to evaluate the safety and effect of an oral treatment, RBX, on retinopathy progression or visual loss in patients with moderately severe to…