Featured series 
Tag: Harvard Medical School
-
Health
Study finds men who consume more dairy products have lower incidence of diabetes
A report from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) – the first large-scale, prospective examination of a relationship between dairy intake and diabetes risk – analyzes data from the HSPH-based Health Professionals Follow-up Study. “Our study found that men consuming higher levels of…
-
Health
T cell misfits may spell autoimmunity
For a would-be T cell, the journey from cradle to grave is likely to be brief. After leaving the bone marrow, the immature immune cell travels directly to the thymus, where it undergoes a winnowing process. To become a mature T cell, it must learn to attack alien proteins and not those peptides produced by…
-
Campus & Community
Harvard examining geospatial analysis technology programs
n Moshi, Tanzania, hard-hit by AIDS, researchers are using detailed aerial photographs and global positioning system receivers to locate study subjects in a maze of houses without addresses and streets without names. The project, a health program for children, families, and communities within Moshi by Harvard Medical School’s Children’s Health and Social Ecology (CHASE) program,…
-
Campus & Community
‘Moving toward’ global warming solution
Earth Day at Harvard offered a hopeful note this year, as speakers praised the University’s efforts toward sustainability, saying they reflect similar grassroots efforts around the country that are forming in response to the problem of global warming. Robert Musil, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said that, although global warming is a serious…
-
Health
Antibiotics do not prevent heart attacks; New findings from the PROVE IT-TIMI 22 clinical trial
Christopher P. Cannon, M.D., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, noted that the fact that many patients do not exhibit identifiable risk factors for arteriosclerosis has prompted ongoing research to find additional markers that will help clinicians identify and then stop progression of cardiovascular disease. Specifically, chlamydia…
-
Health
TB susceptibility gene identified
As many as one out of three people in the world are infected with the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, public health experts estimate. That could lead to a global plague were it not for the fact that only one out of 10 infected people actually develops the disease. Still, TB is a major global health…
-
Health
Blood test can accurately diagnose heart failure in emergency patients
“We found that testing with the NT-proBNP assay was an extremely accurate way to identify or exclude heart failure in patients with shortness of breath,” says James Januzzi Jr., M.D., of the MGH Cardiology Division and the paper’s lead author. Since current standards of treatment are inconsistent, Januzzi says, this new test could prove a…
-
Campus & Community
Simple tools can reduce transmission
Viral upper respiratory and gastrointestinal infections are the two most common illnesses that occur in children enrolled in day care, and secondary attack rates within families can be as high as 27 percent for respiratory illnesses and 70 percent for gastroenteritis. New research published in the April issue of Pediatrics shows that in homes with…
-
Campus & Community
Blue light suppresses oral pathogens
Scientists at the Forsyth Institute have found that blue light can be used to selectively suppress certain bacteria commonly associated with destructive gum disease. The research, published in the April Journal of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, suggests that light in the blue region of the visible spectrum might be useful in preventing, controlling, or treating…
-
Campus & Community
MTV, Harvard study reveals adolescent disconnect
When it comes to the knowledge that loud noise may result in hearing loss and that hearing protection can help, the MTV generation suffers a definite disconnect, according to the results of a novel Web-based survey designed by researchers from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI), Harvard Medical School (HMS), and the Harvard School…
-
Health
Spread of common day care illnesses caused by misconceptions about illness transmission
A Harvard Medical School study found that only two-thirds of parents believed that contact transmission was important for the spread of colds, and fewer than half believed it was important in the spread of stomach flus. Perhaps more surprising, fewer than half stated that changing a diaper and eating food prepared by a person with…
-
Health
Low-dose aspirin shown to reduce risk of first stroke in women
The Women’s Health Study is a large, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial funded by both the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Cancer Institute to evaluate the benefits and risks of low dose aspirin as well as vitamin E supplementation in the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. The trial included healthy women 45…
-
Science & Tech
Scientists find molecular pathway suspected in precancerous stomach lesions
Ramesh Shivdasani, M.D., Ph.D., of Dana-Farber, said the finding “opens a window that could help us eventually interfere with these pathways when they become abnormal. It should give us a list of potential therapeutic targets and could even help us to prevent the development of the precancerous lesions.” Patients with the increasingly common disorder known…
-
Health
MTV, Harvard Web study reveals adolescent disconnect: Unaware of hearing peril, yet willing to listen
While many adolescents and young adults expose themselves to loud music for entertainment, the researchers hypothesized that these individuals might not be aware that over-exposure could result in hearing loss. To find out, a survey was designed by the researchers and posted by the MTV Web site for three days. The survey included questions about…
-
Health
New findings about protection against pneumococcal disease
Before the advent of the pneumococcal vaccine, known as Prevnar, S. pneumoniae caused millions of ear infections each year, half a million episodes of bacterial pneumonia, and life- threatening cases of meningitis and bacteremia. Prevnar triggers recipients’ immune systems to produce “anticapsular antibodies.” However, Prevnar doesn’t work well in the developing world, and it is…
-
Campus & Community
Mystery of how lungs grow is solved
The puzzle of how lungs grow has been solved. Scientists watching the process in mice embryos have found that budding and branching of new air sacs is driven by the mechanical stretching of individual cells. What’s more, they demonstrated that this growth can be adjusted by manipulating mechanical forces involved in the cells’ skeleton, a…
-
Health
Joslin Diabetes Center scientists find genetic defects in immunological tolerance
The genetic defect keeps the body from properly dealing with “errant” immune cells that it normally eliminates by a process called immunological tolerance. These immune cells then attack the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas, mistaking them for foreign invaders. This is the first step in the onset of type 1 diabetes. The pancreatic beta…
-
Health
Researchers find better way to predict stroke risk in sickle cell anemia patients
Researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Harvard Medical School have developed a novel approach to predict the risk of stroke in these patients using their genetic variations. This approach is based on a data mining method called Bayesian…
-
Campus & Community
Decoding the babel of brain cells
If brain cell messages could be separated from the “noise” of other brain activity and clearly understood, researchers would be closer to repairing damage caused by a number of nervous system diseases paralyzing injuries and combat wounds. Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have actually done this with mice. They…
-
Health
High cholesterol levels accelerate growth of prostate cancer
The findings, published in the April 1, 2005 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, are in keeping with population studies that have linked prostate cancer with high cholesterol levels. The researchers also present evidence that cholesterol-lowering ‘statin’ drugs, now widely used in cardiovascular disease, may inhibit cancer growth. A team led by Michael Freeman,…
-
Campus & Community
Simple test predicts heart attack
White cell counts can be easily measured by inexpensive, widely available tests, raising the possibility of lowering the toll of heart disease fatalities, the leading cause of death among women in the United States. “For years, researchers have suspected a link between elevated white blood cell count and heart attack,” notes JoAnn Manson, one of…
-
Health
Explosion of child obesity predicted to shorten U.S. life expectancy
A review by obesity researcher David Ludwig of Children’s Hospital Boston, epidemiologist S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and colleagues concludes that obesity now reduces average life expectancy by about four to nine months, a conservative estimate. They add that if the current epidemic of child and adolescent obesity continues unabated,…
-
Health
Weight status of children ages 8 to 15 predicts obesity and high blood pressure in adulthood
“We have known that kids who are overweight or obese have a higher risk for being overweight or obese as adults. But in this paper, we show that even children in the high normal weight range have an elevated risk of becoming overweight or obese as adults,” said lead author Alison Field, assistant professor of…
-
Health
Largest twin study of age-related macular degeneration finds genetics and environment play large role in disease
Researchers led by Johanna M. Seddon, M.D., at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health conducted the largest study of twins of its kind. Analyses of twins showed that genetic factors play a substantial role in the etiology of AMD and associated macular characteristics, explaining 46 percent…
-
Campus & Community
Hearing loss tied to heart disease
Two members of a family who suffered progressive hearing loss and then underwent heart transplants got Christine Seidman, a Harvard professor of medicine, interested in the strange connection. Their hearing loss began early in life. It progressed for at least 10 years before they started to experience shortness of breath, chest pains, and other symptoms…
-
Health
Protein packages activate genes
It’s all in the packaging. How nature wraps and tags genes determines if and when they become active, according to researchers from Harvard and M.I.T. They did the largest, most detailed study to date of the protein structure that surrounds the human genome. Their findings reveal surprising and previously unknown specifics of how genes get…
-
Campus & Community
Survey: Down syndrome diagnoses found wanting
A survey of mothers in the March issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that obstetricians and genetic counselors are falling short when it comes to delivering a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome to pregnant women. Mothers who have children with Down syndrome, diagnosed prenatally, reported that doctors did not tell them…
-
Health
Poor prenatal nutrition permanently damages function of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas
To understand the increased risk factor, the researchers mated ordinary mice and separated the mothers into a control group that ate as much chow as they wanted throughout their pregnancies and another group that was fully nourished during the first two weeks but undernourished during the third week. At birth, the second group’s babies weighed…
-
Science & Tech
Study identifies mechanism of resistance to targeted therapy in lung cancer patients
Gefitinib acts on the receptor for the epidermal growth factor protein (EGFR) to halt the spread of cancer cells by fitting into the activating pocket of the protein, blocking the growth signals, and thereby depriving the cancer cells of the stimuli they need to survive and proliferate. In 2003, it was approved by the U.S.…