Tag: Health

  • Campus & Community

    Flu vaccinations offered through December

    HUHS is offering free flu shots to members of the Harvard community. No appointment is needed. Walk-in hours at HUHS offices on the second floor of Holyoke Center are noon to 3 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays, now through December, except on Dec. 24 and 25.

    1 minute
  • Health

    Scientists identify gene responsible for statin-induced muscle pain

    Statins, the popular class of drugs used to lower cholesterol, are among the most commonly prescribed medications in developed countries. But for some patients, accompanying side effects of muscle weakness and pain become chronic problems and, in rare cases, can escalate to debilitating and even life-threatening damage.

    4 minutes
  • Health

    Selective attention most impaired during first night shift worked

    Our biological propensity for keeping awake during the day and sleeping at night makes night work a challenge. Now, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have found that attention is especially affected during the first night shift. This research appears in the Nov. 28 issue of the Public Library of Science One.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Environmental work honored by HMS

    The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School (HMS) has named Kofi Annan and Alice Waters as its 2008 Global Environmental Citizen Award recipients.

    1 minute
  • Health

    Flavonoid-rich diet helps women decrease risk of ovarian cancer

    New research out of the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) reports that frequent consumption of foods containing the flavonoid kaempferol, including nonherbal tea and broccoli, was associated with a reduced risk of ovarian cancer. The researchers also found a decreased risk in women who consumed large amounts of the flavonoid luteolin, which…

    2 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    In brief

    HUHS flu vaccination clinics Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) is offering free flu shots to members of the Harvard community.

    1 minute
  • Health

    Politics of pain — from Percodan to Kevorkian

    On a rainy Tuesday afternoon (Nov. 6), physicians, historians of science, and members of the general public gathered in the gymnasium at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study to hear about pain.

    6 minutes
  • Health

    Symposium addresses American Indian health

    Sunshine Dwojak, a fourth-year Harvard Medical School student, was 26 when her mother died of heart disease, leaving behind three children. Dwojak’s mother was 48.

    6 minutes
  • Health

    Study: Single muscle far more complex than previously believed

    New research from Harvard’s Concord Field Station has shown that the common perception of a muscle as a single functional unit is incorrect and that different sections within an individual muscle actually do different work.

    3 minutes
  • Health

    Beta-carotene reduces dementia risk in men

    Researchers affiliated with the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) report in the Nov. 12 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine evidence that men who take beta-carotene supplements for 15 years or longer may have less cognitive decline and better verbal memory than those who do not.

    2 minutes
  • Health

    Flavonoid-rich diet helps women decrease risk of ovarian cancer

    New research out of the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) reports that frequent consumption of foods containing the flavonoid kaempferol, including nonherbal tea and broccoli, was associated with a reduced risk of ovarian cancer.

    2 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Flu vaccination clinics are armed and ready for you

    Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) is offering free flu shots to members of the Harvard community.

    1 minute
  • Health

    A smaller world, but not more intimate

    Our increasingly interconnected world has made it easier for information and disease to spread. However, a new study from Harvard University and Cornell University shows that fewer “degrees of separation” can make social networks too weak to disseminate behavioral change. The finding that “small world” networks are limited in their power to shape individual behavior…

    4 minutes
  • Health

    Changes in diet and lifestyle may help prevent infertility

    Women who followed a combination of five or more lifestyle factors, including changing specific aspects of their diets, experienced more than 80 percent less relative risk of infertility due to ovulatory disorders compared to women who engaged in none of the factors.

    3 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Newsmakers

    The Lindbergh Foundation recently named Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Peter Girguis one its 14 Lindbergh Grant recipients for 2007. ProCor, a global communication program promoting heart health founded by Harvard School of Public Health Professor of Cardiology Emeritus Bernard Lown, has granted its first Louise Lown Heart Hero Award to the Heart…

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Harvard University Health Services offers flu vaccination clinics

    Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) is offering free flu shots to members of the Harvard community.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Blood drive in Holyoke Center

    The Office for Sponsored Programs is holding a blood drive Nov. 6 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Holyoke Center (conference room 704) for the benefit of Mount Auburn Hospital.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Berkman named director of Center for Population and Development Studies

    Social epidemiologist Lisa Berkman has been appointed director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard Provost Steven E. Hyman announced today (Oct. 26).

    3 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    HUHS flu vaccination clinics

    Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) is offering free flu shots to members of the Harvard community.

    1 minute
  • Campus & Community

    Blood drive in Holyoke Center

    The Office for Sponsored Programs is holding a blood drive Nov. 6 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Holyoke Center (conference room 704) for the benefit of Mount Auburn Hospital.

    1 minute
  • Health

    Improving women’s health key Indian strategy

    Detailed research of Indian health disparities has revealed that significant differences in access to health care exist even within families, with the health and nutrition of women and girls taking a backseat to that of men and boys.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Chidambaram talks about ‘rich poor’ India

    At 60 years old, India is a young nation. It is also a country that is both rich and poor.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Mayor Bloomberg receives HSPH’s Richmond Award

    Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City has been named the 2007 recipient of the Julius B. Richmond Award, the highest honor given by the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).

    4 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Junior faculty, clinicians receive Shore Fellowships

    The Eleanor and Miles Shore 50th Anniversary Fellowship Program for Scholars in Medicine has announced the selection of more than 90 junior faculty members, researchers, and clinicians as fellows for the 2007-08 academic year. Fellows generally receive between $25,000 and $30,000 for one year.

    9 minutes
  • Health

    Hormone therapy for prostate cancer puts heart at risk

    Administering androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) prior to surgery and combining ADT with radiation therapy are popular approaches to treating men diagnosed with advanced or high-risk localized prostate cancer. However, the potentially negative side effects of ADT are just now being explored. Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have found that ADT may increase the…

    2 minutes
  • Health

    Data on life expectancy show many countries clustered in high mortality ‘traps’

    Growing recognition of the importance of health as a contributing factor to economic development and societal change has prompted the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) to add a new subsection on sustainable health to its existing section on sustainable Development.

    1 minute
  • Health

    At HMOs, Medicaid patients fare worse than others

    Once viewed as a panacea to the nation’s health care problems, HMOs have fallen out of favor. Commercially insured patients who flooded into HMOs, or managed care, in the early 1990s left in droves by the end of the decade. Medicaid patients, however, don’t always have the luxury of choosing their health plans, and the…

    3 minutes
  • Health

    Second pathway behind HIV-associated immune system dysfunction is discovered

    Researchers at the Partners AIDS Research Center (PARC) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) may have discovered a second molecular “switch” responsible for turning off the immune system’s response against HIV. Last year, members of the same team identified a molecule called PD-1 that suppresses the activity of HIV-specific CD8 T cells that should destroy virus-infected…

    3 minutes
  • Health

    Stem cells may enhance capability of heart cells to regenerate

    During a fatal heart attack, at least 1 billion heart cells are killed in the left ventricle, one of the heart’s two big lower pumping chambers that move blood into the body.

    5 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Chili pepper cocktail points to wide-awake surgery

    Imagine an epidural or a shot of Novocain that doesn’t paralyze your legs or make you numb yet totally blocks your pain. This type of pain management is now within reach. As a result, childbirth, surgery, and trips to the dentist might be less traumatic in the future, thanks to researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital…

    5 minutes