Featured series 
Tag: Massachusetts General Hospital
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Health
Extended release stimulant effective for long-term ADHD treatment
In the October 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, a multi- institutional research team reported finding that treatment with Concerta, a once-daily form of the drug methylphenidate, successfully controlled ADHD symptoms in more than 200 children with ADHD. The study was supported by McNeil Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures…
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Health
Study suggests obesity has lesser financial impact on African-Americans
The study published in the January 2005 issue of the American Journal of Public Health is among the first to examine how patient demographic factors affect the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and health-care costs. “From the perspective of the health-care system, obesity may be less costly among African-Americans than among whites,” says Christina…
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Campus & Community
Discovering how we appreciate a loss
A committee of psychiatrists, surgeons, ethicists, and others decided that the only course left for five people with otherwise untreatable mental disorders was to cut out a certain area of their brains. The region sits near the middle of the brain tucked between regions that have to do with thinking and emotion. It is known…
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Campus & Community
Appetite hormone restores fertility
A hormone called leptin has been trumpeted as an appetite suppressor and a possible treatment for obesity. New research shows that “a clear connection also exists between fat, or energy storage, and the ability to reproduce,” says Corrine Welt, an assistant professor of medicine who works at Massachusetts General Hospital, a Harvard affiliate. The women…
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Health
Study finds leptin plays a key role in women’s health
Senior author Christos Mantzoros, M.D., director of the Human Nutrition Research Unit and clinical research overseer of the Department of Endocrinology at BIDMC and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School explains that the three groups of women who can most benefit from this study are very thin women who are infertile, serious athletes…
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Campus & Community
Probing inappropriate rage
As 30 research subjects seethed, scientists measured blood flowing between the thinking and emotional parts of their brains. What would be the difference between people who controlled their anger pretty well, and those who could not handle it in a socially acceptable way? These were the first such brain scans ever done with mental patients…
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Health
Stem cell science
“Stem-cell transplants are already performed every day in Harvard-affiliated hospitals — and around the world,” says Harvard Stem Cell Initiative codirector David Scadden, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. So-called bone-marrow transplants, which transfer tens of thousands of cells of many different…
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Health
Cystic fibrosis gene linked to fatty acid defects
Researchers already understood that the defective CFTR gene causes CF, explains senior author Steven D. Freedman, M.D., Ph.D., of the gastroenterology division at BIDMC and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “But we didn’t understand how this defective gene leads to the symptoms of the disease. This new study sheds light on what…
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Campus & Community
The brains behind writer’s block
“It’s likely that writing and other creative work involve a push-pull interaction between the frontal and temporal lobes,” Harvard Medical School neurology instructor Alice Flaherty speculates. If the temporal lobe activity holds sway, an aspiring scribe may turn out 600 logorrheic pages. If the temporal lobes are restrained by frontal lobe changes, the result might…
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Health
Sperm cells made in lab can fertilize eggs
Scientists injected laboratory-created sperm into eggs, and the resulting embryos grew to the point where they would normally be implanted into a womb. The experiment was done with mouse stem cells, but mice, genetically speaking, are so close to men, few scientists doubt that the same experiment can be done in humans. The breakthrough, made…
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Health
One combination of AIDS drugs appears better for starting treatment
Combination drug therapy – also called highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) – made a huge difference in the treatment of HIV infection during the 1990s, changing HIV/AIDS into an illness that people could live with for many years. Combinations of three antiviral drugs could keep the virus in check for a while, and when one…
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Science & Tech
Puberty gene identified
A gene discovered by Harvard researchers and their colleagues in England makes a protein necessary to trigger a hormonal cascade that flows from the brain to the gonads. Without it, the researchers have shown, humans and mice do not become sexually mature. Stephanie Seminara, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, called the…
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Health
Regeneration of insulin-producing islets may lead to diabetes cure
Type 1 diabetes develops when the body’s immune cells mistakenly attack the insulin-producing islet cells of the pancreas. As islet cells die, insulin production ceases, and blood sugar levels rise, damaging organs throughout the body. Cells from an unexpected source, the spleen, appear to develop into insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells in adult animals. This surprising…
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Health
Physicians report trouble obtaining specialty services for uninsured
A research team surveyed more than 2,000 physicians at U.S. academic health centers who had provided direct patient care during the preceding year. Among the questions asked were whether the physicians were unable to admit uninsured patients or had to limit such patients’ hospital care; how often they could obtain specialty referrals or advanced services…
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Health
Did life originally spring from clay?
While the research is a far cry from proving that humans sprang from clay, as some creation myths assert, it does provide a possible mechanism for explaining how life initially arose from nonliving molecules. Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital showed that the presence of clay aids naturally occurring reactions…
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Health
Researchers boost blood cancer fight
Working with colleagues at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, Harvard researchers found that giving mice a hormone known for building bones increased their production of blood stem cells. If it works in humans as in mice, the advance could provide additional hope for patients suffering from leukemia, myeloma, or lymphoma who need bone…
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Health
Compound traces brain plaques in real time
Alzheimer’s disease is notoriously difficult to diagnose. Though sophisticated functional and cognitive tests can help, they often fail to distinguish between Alzheimer’s and other non-amyloid-based dementias, particularly frontotemporal dementia. The ability to measure plaques in vivo would not only provide clinicians with an immediate and reliable diagnosis, but over time would allow them to gauge…
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Health
Innate signal sparks homing of T cells
The results of three studies published together in the Aug. 31, 2003 online edition of Nature Immunology help explain the uncanny ability of T cells to home to problem areas in the body and suggest potential new mechanisms to treat inflammatory diseases, such as asthma. When one fast-acting lipid hits the panic button about a…
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Health
Close interaction seen between blood vessel development and fat tissue formation
Findings from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital could eventually help to solve problems ranging from cancer, to obesity, to the development of replacement organs. The findings involve the key physiological processes of angiogenesis, the growth of new blood cells, and adipogenesis, the development and growth of fat cells, which appear to be so closely interwoven…
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Health
Imaging technique tracks tumor escape into lymph nodes
For doctors as well as patients, detecting metastases can be a notoriously burdensome affair. Often, the only way to see whether a patient’s lymph nodes are invaded by cancer cells is to surgically remove and inspect them. In some cases, such as gastric cancer, this can mean several hours of sorting through the nodes in…
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Health
Hypnosis helps healing
“Hypnosis has been used in Western medicine for more than 150 years to treat everything from anxiety to pain, from easing the nausea of cancer chemotherapy to enhancing sports performance,” says researcher Carol Ginandes of Harvard Medical School. A list of applications she provides includes treatment of phobias, panic, low self-esteem, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, stress,…
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Health
Minimally invasive treatment successfully destroys kidney tumors
A research team from Massachusetts General Hospital has described how a technique called radiofrequency ablation (RFA) destroyed all renal cell carcinoma (RCC) tumors less than 3 cm in size and some larger tumors, depending on their location. The most common form of kidney cancer, RCC will be diagnosed in almost 32,000 Americans this year and…
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Health
Scientists identify hundreds of worm genes that regulate fat storage
Findings by Harvard researchers, published in the Jan. 16, 2003 issue of Nature, represent the first survey of an entire genome for all genes that regulate fat storage. The research team led by Gary Ruvkun, of the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Molecular Biology, and postdoctoral fellow Kaveh Ashrafi identified about 400 genes encompassing a…
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Science & Tech
New 3-D mammography system may improve breast imaging
Researcher Elizabeth Rafferty of the Massachusetts General Hospital Breast Imaging Service described initial results of a study comparing a new technique, called digital tomosynthesis, to standard mammography. Among the new technique’s advantages is a significant reduction in false positive test results. “The overlap of breast structures presents a major challenge for radiologists, both because these…
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Health
Study of phthalate exposure in humans finds association with sperm DNA damage
Phthalates are a class of compounds used to hold color and scent in many cosmetics and personal care items such as soaps, detergents, skin preparations and aftershave lotions, and they also find their way into food through packaging materials. Di-ethylhexyl phthalate, one form of phthalate, is used to soften a wide range of plastic goods,…
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Health
New device documents clot formation in living mice
In the October 2002 issue of the journal Nature Medicine, Bruce and Barbara Furie, both Harvard Medical School professors of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, reportrf on the timing and assembly of three components in arterial thrombosis in mice. Their findings suggest a revised model of the earliest steps of blood coagulation. Using…
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Health
AIDS vaccine trials underway
A new AIDS vaccine is being tested in Boston, according to senior investigator Clyde Crumpacker, infectious disease specialist in the Virology Research Clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School’s Division of AIDS. The study, which will include a total of 160 participants at 10 sites throughout…
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Health
Protector protein part of nerve cell defense
Heat shock proteins are known to protect all cell types from various general assaults. They were originally discovered when cultured cells that were heated expressed the proteins at high levels and proved more resistant to other injuries and toxins. They help fold proteins that are misfolded in times of crisis, help maintain structural integrity of…
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Health
Mammalian teeth regrown in lab
A study involved seeding cells from the immature teeth of six-month old pigs onto biodegradable polymer scaffolds. The researchers then placed these structures into rat hosts. Within 30 weeks, small, recognizable tooth crowns had formed. These contained dentin; odontoblasts, cells that secrete dentin-forming protein; a well-defined pulp chamber; Hertwig’s root sheath epithelia; cementoblasts, which form…
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Health
Chili peppers and inflammation
Researchers have discovered that the burinng pain of arthritis is similar to the pain associated with eating chili peppers. “The receptor activated by chili peppers in the mouth and other tissues also increases in the terminals of sensory neurons in the skin after inflammation, and this contributes to pain hypersensitivity,” says Clifford Woolf, director of…