Featured series 
Tag: Harvard Medical School
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Health
New molecular model increases longevity and could allow you to eat cake, too
Scientists have known about the longevity benefits of caloric restriction since experiments in the 1930s showed that rats lived much longer if their food intake was severely restricted. Broadly speaking, the reason is stress. Although usually viewed as the enemy of good health, stress can actually boost longevity, driving an organism to slow down metabolism…
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Sea squirt cancer drug under test
In the United States, researchers at three Harvard University-affiliated hospitals — Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital — have been testing a powerful drug on patients with breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer. “Tests show that the drug has been active enough to expand these trials,” says Bruce Chabner, a professor…
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Endostatin shows no toxicity and some clinical activity in latest report on phase I trial
Discovered in the Children’s Hospital Boston laboratory of Judah Folkman, Endostatin is a natural substance that blocks the formation of new blood vessels around and in tumors, thereby disrupting their ability to survive and grow. The formation of new blood vessels, a process called angiogenesis, can be helpful — in wound healing, for example —…
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Old-line antibiotic seen to save neurons
Developed as an antibiotic 30 years ago, a drug called minocycline was later discovered to ease acne, rheumatoid arthritis, and other inflammatory conditions. A few years ago, it was shown to slow and even limit the neuronal damage caused by stroke and Huntington’s disease in mice. But researchers were not sure how it works in…
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Science illuminates art
Monet and other painters exploited the parallel visual processing of color and brightness. A sunset seems to shimmer, a field of poppies seems to wave, and a river seems to flow when there is a disconnect between the color and luminance pathways, according to a book, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, by Margaret…
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New radio wave treatment corrects back disorders
Doctors at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are using radio waves –- the same energy that sends signals to your car radio -– to gently dissolve small amounts of unwanted disc tissue and relieve the pressure often associated with lower back and upper leg pain. Virtually bloodless and exceptionally precise, nucleoplasty radio wave injection is…
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Science & Tech
New online approach builds community around medical cases
A new suite of Internet tools is boosting student-faculty interaction in an engrossing twist on traditional case-based teaching at Harvard Medical School. Called ICON, for “interactive case-based online network,” the cases are run by a faculty-student-IT specialist trio at Harvard Medical School, backed by extensive cross-faculty collaboration. ICON is revamping neuroscience case-based learning by engrossing…
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Science & Tech
Black, Latino children with asthma receive lesser standard of care
Led by Tracy Lieu, associate professor of ambulatory care and prevention at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Harvard Medical School, the researchers interviewed parents of children with asthma who were insured by Medicaid programs. Of the children, 38 percent were black, 19 percent Latino, and 31 percent white. The researchers studied the effects of ethnicity…
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Health
Peripheral ‘Swatch’ watches are powerful force in modulating body’s circadian rhythms
Clinicians have known for years that organs function at different rates — the heart beats, kidneys transport ions and electrolytes, the liver metabolizes lipids, sugars, and amino acids differently over the course of the day — and have used this knowledge to design more effective drug regimens for patients. A better understanding of what drives…
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Health
Increased intake of dairy products may help reduce risk of insulin resistance
Milk intake has decreased significantly over the past three decades while the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes has increased. The authors of a Harvard research study note that for most of the past 30 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Heart Association have recommended low-fat diets for the prevention and…
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Health
Changes in brain shown with learning
Harvard Medical School researchers Vadim Bolshakov, Evgeny Tsvetkov, and Bill Carlezon, based at McLean Hospital, reported with colleagues in the April 11, 2002 issue of the journal Neuron that they have found clear evidence of cause and effect between learning and long-term changes in the brain. Their research focused on how learned fear made changes…
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New tool speeds study of mammalian protein function
A new technology developed by Harvard Medical School researchers in the laboratory of Yang Shi, associate professor of pathology, extends the range of possibilities of selective interference of gene expression without having to manipulate DNA in the egg or embryo. The new technology makes it possible to turn off genes in a highly specific manner,…
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Meditation dramatically changes body temperatures
Harvard researcher Herbert Benson, who has been studying a meditation technique known as “g Tum-mo” for 20 years, says that “Buddhists feel the reality we live in is not the ultimate one. There’s another reality we can tap into that’s unaffected by our emotions, by our everyday world. Buddhists believe this state of mind can…
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Death protein may cause neural tube defects in babies of diabetic mothers
A research report provides a possible explanation for a class of birth defects that appears to be on the rise. A protein normally involved in programmed cell death may, as a consequence of high blood sugar, mistakenly tell cells of the nascent neural tube to die. Even with good control of diabetes, the risk for…
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Science & Tech
Pollen production — and allergies — may rise significantly over next 50 years
Ragweed, which flourishes along roadsides and in disturbed habitats throughout North America, produces one of the most common allergens. A study by Harvard researchers found that ragweed grown in an atmosphere with double the current carbon dioxide levels produced 61 percent more pollen than normal. Such a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide is expected to…
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Science & Tech
Direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs grows rapidly
In the first analysis of patterns of direct-to-consumer advertising before and after 1997 guidelines issued by the Food and Drug Administration, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School and the Sloan School of Management at MIT have found that such advertising increased three-fold between 1996 and 2000. Still, direct-to-consumer advertising accounted…
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Science & Tech
Physicians warn of nuclear terrorist threat
In a new study, Lachlan Forrow, director of ethics support services at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. and his co-authors used software developed by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency to calculate the impact of a 12.5 kiloton nuclear explosion –- the same size as the…
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Science & Tech
Genetic computation tells man from microbe
By one estimate (based on bacteria counts in the colon or stool samples), microbes that call our bodies home outnumber human cells 10 to 1. Most of the bacteria, viruses, and other microbes are harmless or even beneficial. But others are suspected of being at the root of mysterious chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis,…
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Science & Tech
Physicians vs. the Internet
Each day, about 7.5 million people in the United States use the Internet to get health information, while less than 3 million consult their doctors. Of the 110 million Americans who surf the Internet, more than 60 percent use it for health advice. But many doctors are worried because they believe there is much misinformation…
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Health
FDA approves Gleevec as oral treatment for gastrointestinal stromal cancer
George Demetri, medical director of the Sarcoma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, was the lead investigator of a clinical study that looked at using Gleevec, an oral therapy, to treat occurrences of gastrointestinal stromal tumor. GIST, as it is known, is a rare form of sarcoma…
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Health
Mouse model devised that develops asthma
A Harvard research team led by Laurie Glimcher, Irene Heinz Given professor of immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health and a Harvard Medical School professor of medicine, two years ago discovered a molecule that they named T-bet. T-bet seemed to help control the immune system response by determining the actions of helper T…
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Health
Cell surface proteins can have pro- and anti-angiogenic face
Angiogenesis is the process by which cancer tumors develop a network of blood vessels to feed them, so that they may continue their growth. The strategy that cancer cells use to attract blood vessels to them involves a series of chemical messages. Researchers think of this as a type of cellular kidnapping, luring the blood…
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Health
Pigment plays role in Xenopus development
Harvard Medical School researchers have discovered that a pigment contained in the egg of the South African claw-toed frog is indispensable for development. Witout the pigment, called biliverdin, which is present in yolk platelets, the egg cannot go through dorsal axis formation. In its absence, Xenopus laevis embryos develop into headless, eyeless, spineless lumps of…
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Researchers find better way to predict childhood brain tumor outcomes
About 2,000 children a year are diagnosed with medulloblastoma, or brain tumor. In a study, researchers examined gene expression patterns from 99 patient tumor samples of three different types of brain tumors. In addition to distinguishing tumor types from each other, the study found strong expression of a signaling protein known as “Sonic Hedgehog,” which…
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Can weight loss decrease heart disease in type 2 diabetes?
Can weight loss decrease heart disease in type 2 diabetes? That’s the question being asked by Harvard researchers and others based at three Boston medical centers. In a nationwide study conducted locally at Massachusetts General Hospital, Joslin Diabetes Center and Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, researchers will gain valuable information about the relationship between weight loss…
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Science & Tech
Study examines data withholding in academic genetics
Eric G. Campbell, of the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues recently surveyed geneticists and other life scientists at the 100 U.S. universities that received the most funding from the National Institutes of Health in 1998. Data was received from a total of 1,240 geneticists and…
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Health
Minimally invasive surgical procedure offers limited benefits for colon cancer patients
A national clinical trial compared the effects of standard colon cancer surgery with a newer, minimally invasive procedure for removing tumors called laparoscopic surgery. Researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Mayo Clinic and their colleagues found that compared with patients who had the standard operation, those who had the minimally invasive surgery were able…
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Science & Tech
Human genome sequence yields new tool for microbe-hunting
Microbiologists have traditionally identified pathogens (disease-causing organisms) by growing them in a laboratory dish from a sample of infected tissue. But not all pathogens can be cultured this way. Molecular tools do exist and have been used to identify some new disease organisms, but they have major limitations. But a new microbe-hunting method holds promise…
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Health
Link found between body rhythms and circadian clock, light
The brain’s circadian clock is a tiny cluster of neurons behind the eyes. This cluster of cells sends out signals that control the body’s daily rhythms. New research from Harvard Medical School has started us on the path to understanding better how this process works. The possible implications of understanding how the circadian clock works…