Featured series 
Tag: Massachusetts General Hospital
-
Health
Alzheimer’s-associated enzyme elevated in key brain areas
A research report that appears in the September 2002 issue of the journal Archives of Neurology may improve understanding of the most common form of Alzheimer’s disease. “Our key finding is that beta-secretase activity — the efficiency of how the enzyme works — is increased in Alzheimer’s diseased brains specifically in those areas affected by…
-
Science & Tech
Information Age will change doctors’ role in healing
Even as the Internet allows patients access to information previously only available through their doctors, patients still trust the information they get from their doctors more than they do from Web sites, current surveys suggest. Because of this, doctors may fill the role of advisers or consultants, helping patients not only sort through the information…
-
Health
Combined kidney and bone marrow transplantation allows patients to discontinue anti-rejection drugs
Megan Sykes, head of the bone marrow transplantation section of the Massachusetts Transplantation Biology Research Center and professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, recently described how infusing kidney transplant recipients with bone marrow from their donors immediately after the transplant surgery induced a state of mixed chimerism, a blending of donor and recipient immune…
-
Science & Tech
The next big thing in mining the genome
About 99.9 percent of the 3.1 billion base pairs in the human genome are the same from person to person. The remaining 0.1 percent of differences comprises more than 10 million common single-letter genetic variations (and many more rare variants) scattered through the genome. By the numbers, a comprehensive search for the multiple genetic contributions…
-
Health
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…
-
Health
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…
-
Science & Tech
Mustard shows backbone in its own defense
Over the past few years, accumulated evidence from many scientists suggests that plants, animals, and insects share common elements in their innate skirmishes with potential pathogens. In the Feb. 28, 2002 issue of the journal Nature, plant scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard and their colleagues have reported another striking similarity. The researchers identified…
-
Health
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…
-
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…
-
Science & Tech
Minority patients face barriers to optimum end-of-life care
Eric Krakauer is an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and part of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Palliative Care Service. He and his colleagues have been concerned that, according to many national studies, minorities do not receive the same level of health care that non-minorities do. This is particularly true in the area of what…
-
Health
Study adds to the understanding of musical pitch perception
There are differences in the sounds of two voices or two musical instruments even if they hit the same note, and somehow the brain knows that. A new study shows that the auditory cortex, an area of the brain that interprets sound, is important for frequency processing and pitch perception. The research findings, published in…
-
Health
Pain and pleasure activate same brain structures
David Borsook is a Harvard Medical School associate professor of radiology, who both treats patients and conducts research. “Over 15 years of seeing patients with pain it became obvious that we do not have good methods of assessing chronic pain,” Borsook says. “And we do not have good methods for treating it.” So Borsook and…
-
Health
Whole genes delivered to cells
To make a protein, a cell’s enzymes typically edit out about 90 percent of the information along the length of a DNA strand that makes up a whole gene. In their labs, scientists usually do the same. However, there may be something biologically important in those seemingly disposable chunks of DNA material. Harvard Medical School…
-
Science & Tech
New study provides mixed report card on informed consent to cancer clinical trials
According to a study that appeared in the Nov. 24, 2001, issue of The Lancet, nearly one quarter of cancer patients who participate in clinical trials do not realize that the trials are conducted mainly to benefit future patients, not themselves. Many patients are unaware that experimental treatments are not yet proven to be better…
-
Health
Cardiovascular risks seen from marathon running
Researchers analyzed the blood of marathon runners less than 24 hours after they had finished a race. They found abnormally high levels of inflammatory and clotting factors of the kind that are known to set the stage for heart attacks. “My concern is for people who exercise thinking ‘more is better,’ and that marathon running…
-
Health
One-tenth of medical residents feel unprepared
Findings from a study suggest that gaps exist in the preparedness of physicians to manage the full range of patients, procedures and problems they may encounter. A surprising one in 10 of medical residents said they felt unprepared to deal with such tasks as the treatment of HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, nursing home patients, management of…
-
Health
Cell death in eggs traced to smoking
A woman is born with just so many egg cells, called oocytes. When she begins ovulating, she has about 400. Even though that may seem like a lot, considering the few that would ever be fertilized, scientists have found that loss of oocytes influences a woman’s health. Early loss of oocytes leads to early menopause…
-
Health
Diet and exercise dramatically delay type 2 diabetes
Diabetes afflicts more than 16 million people in the United States; type 2 diabetes accounts for up to 95 percent of all diabetes cases. New findings from the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), a major clinical trial conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and 26 other medical centers nationwide, show that modifications in diet and exercise…
-
Science & Tech
Study finds parents of chronically ill children avoid switching to HMOs
The incentive to switch health plans is usually a lower cost to the patient. So if parents of chronically ill children want to retain their old health plans instead of switching to health maintenance organizations (HMOs), they have to pay a higher price. Parents who are financially burdened may feel torn between getting the best…
-
Health
Adult stem cells effect a cure
Using stem cells from the unborn to treat adult diseases has created an anguished public debate. Now research news from Harvard Medical School scientists may help to end that debate by showing that adult stem cells can be coaxed into performing new functions. Researchers working with diabetic mice first killed cells responsible for the diabetes.…
-
Health
An alternate take on Alzheimer’s
Much of Alzheimer’s research has focused on the role of a protein, amyloid-beta, found at high levels in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and which coagulates into plaques. Researcher Ashley Bush, a Harvard Medical School associate professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, believes that something else causes Alzheimer’s dementia: oxidation of trace metals in…
-
Science & Tech
Never-before-seen look inside the world of cancerous tumors
Harvard researchers working at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Radiation Oncology unit have used a powerful new microscope to see inside cancerous tumors. The microscope is so powerful that it can see individual cells within a tumor. “We can see what’s going on under the surface of the tumor without disturbing the tumor itself,” says principal investigator…
-
Health
Introducing baby to the right bacteria
Developing a symbiotic relationship with the right bacteria is essential for a baby’s health and development. W. Allan Walker, a researcher at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, has been leading research into the complex relationship among the newborn gastrointestinal system, its bacterial immigrants, and the way breast milk helps regulate the process. Walker…
-
Health
First domino falls in research on sense of touch
Unlike the other four senses, touch is ubiquitous, involving sensory terminals dispersed over the outside and on the inside of the body. This system encodes a variety of sensations in addition to touch, such as pain, vibration, pressure, stretch, itch, texture, and temperature. The system is sensitive to certain chemical states like painful tissue acidity,…
-
Health
Pain promoter plays unexpected role in central nervous system
Despite all the attention it draws in patients, pain has only in recent years been deemed a subject worthy of scientific scrutiny.
-
Science & Tech
Harvard faculty press aggressive agenda for AIDS fight in Africa
A statement signed by more than 100 Harvard faculty members calls upon wealthy countries, in partnership with poor countries, to establish a global trust fund to make life-prolonging antiretroviral therapy available in the areas of the world hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic. The statement is the first of its kind to outline a comprehensive…
-
Health
Surgery without scalpels
Paul Simmons, a 29-year-old Maine farmer, suffered from a lung tumor. In February 2001, at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a probe containing a long needle was inserted into his chest and guided to the tumor by a scanning device. As Eric vanSonnenberg and his colleagues did the procedure, they could watch on…
-
Health
Majority of Alzheimer’s plaques cleared from brains of living mice
Harvard Medical School researchers, working with scientists at Elan Pharmaceuticals, cleared 70 percent of Alzheimer’s plaques from the brains of mice by applying anti-plaque antibodies directly to the mouse brains through tiny holes in their skulls. A year and a half before, Elan scientists showed that they could prevent plaque formation in the Alzheimer’s-prone mice…
-
Health
Growth factor seen to reverse loss of muscle from aging, disease
Previous work by Nadia Rosenthal of Harvard Medical School and her colleagues showed that injection of a virus directing the expression of a molecule known as insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) into a skeletal muscle resulted in a much larger and stronger muscle. Now research described by Rosenthal and colleagues illustrates that the effect of…
-
Health
T-cell response to HIV proteins may make them vaccine candidates
Development of a vaccine against HIV-1 has long focused on the virus’s structural proteins. These molecules are expressed relatively late in the viral life cycle, after HIV-1 has decreased the expression of an important set of cellular proteins involved in the body’s ability to fight viral infections. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical…