Featured series 
Tag: Massachusetts General Hospital
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Health
Good news for marathoners
Harvard researchers have found that those participating in marathons and half-marathons are not at an increased risk of cardiac arrest.
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Health
Use, abuse of Internet pharmacies
Efforts to halt the growing abuse of prescription drugs must include addressing the availability of these drugs on the Internet and increasing physician awareness of the dangers posed by Internet pharmacies.
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Campus & Community
Harvard grad and HMS student are Rhodes Scholars
Matthews Mmopi, a recent Harvard graduate from South Africa, and David Obert, a second-year Harvard Medical School (HMS) student, have been selected as 2012 Rhodes Scholars, and will join the University’s four U.S. Rhodes winners at the University of Oxford next fall.
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Health
Slowing neurodegeneration in Huntington’s
Harvard researchers have found a treatment that increases brain levels of an important regulatory enzyme may slow the loss of brain cells that characterizes Huntington’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.
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Health
Why some TB cells resist antibiotics
A new study led by Harvard School of Public Health researchers provides a novel explanation as to why some tuberculosis cells are inherently more difficult to treat with antibiotics.
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Arts & Culture
Using the bully pulpit
In his new memoir, former Harvard Medical School Dean Joseph Martin recalls a small-town childhood, an attraction to medicine, and the ups and downs of leadership.
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Health
Rebuilding the brain’s circuitry
Harvard scientists have rebuilt genetically diseased circuitry in a section of the mouse hypothalamus, an area controlling obesity and energy balance, demonstrating that complex and intricately wired circuitry of the brain long considered incapable of cellular repair can be rewired with the right type of neuronal “replacement parts.”
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Health
Slowing ALS symptom progression
Harvard researchers find that treatment with dexpramipexole — a novel drug believed to prevent dysfunction of mitochondria, the subcellular structures that provide most of a cell’s energy — appears to slow symptom progression in the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
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Health
Increasing risk for melanoma
A major international study has identified a novel gene mutation that appears to increase the risk of both inherited and sporadic cases of malignant melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer.
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Campus & Community
Norman Paul, family therapy pioneer, 85
Norman Paul, an innovator in the use of family therapy to treat mental illness, died on Oct. 14.
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Science & Tech
Surgical Anesthesia
Allan M. Brandt Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine, Harvard Medical School Professor of the History of Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
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Campus & Community
Sports Helmets, Catcher’s Mask
Thomas J. Gill IV Associate Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, Harvard Medical School Chief, MGH Sports Medicine Service
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Health
Major study on schizophrenia, bipolar
Looking at large samples, an international consortium — that included involvement by scientists at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) — has identified 10 genetic risk factors that contribute to either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and discovered strong evidence for three genes being implicated in both diseases.
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Science & Tech
What makes AA work?
Among the many ways that participation in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) helps its members stay sober, two appear to be most important — spending more time with individuals who support efforts toward sobriety and increased confidence in the ability to maintain abstinence in social situations.
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Health
Detecting heart-valve infection
A novel imaging probe developed by a Harvard-led team of investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital may make it possible to diagnose accurately a dangerous infection of the heart valves.
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Campus & Community
Brown wins Sacks Award for research
The National Institute of Statistical Sciences has presented the 2011 Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research to Emery N. Brown of MIT and Harvard.
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Health
HSPH receives $14.1M grant
Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) has been awarded a $14.1 million, four-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to test the effectiveness of an innovative checklist-based childbirth safety program in reducing deaths and improving outcomes of mothers and infants in 120 hospitals in India.
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Health
When to alter cancer screenings
Not only is it important for physicians to be fully informed about any cancer in their patients’ family histories, but a massive new study led by a Harvard researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and a University of California scientist indicates that it is important to update that history whenever there are contemporaneous changes in…
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Science & Tech
A closer look at atherosclerosis
Researchers at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have developed a one-micrometer-resolution version of the intravascular imaging technology optical coherence tomography (OCT) that can reveal cellular and subcellular features of coronary artery disease.
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Health
New hope against diabetes
Results from a phase 1 drug trial by Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital researchers showed that a decades-old tuberculosis drug knocked out the autoimmune cells that attack diabetic patients’ insulin-producing cells, followed by indications that pancreatic function was improving, albeit transiently.
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Health
Cell’s linchpin protein found
After decades of failed efforts, researchers have discovered, through a combination of digital database mining and laboratory assays, the linchpin protein that drives mitochondria’s calcium machinery.
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Health
A living laser
In a new report, Harvard researchers Malte Gather and Seok-Hyun Yun describe how a single cell genetically engineered to express green fluorescent protein can be used to amplify the light particles called photons into nanosecond-long pulses of laser light.
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Health
Increasing odds for survival
A duo of drugs, each targeting a prime survival strategy of tumors, can be safely administered and is potentially more effective than either drug alone for advanced, inoperable melanomas, according to a phase 1 clinical trial led by Harvard investigators at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
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Health
ADHD linked to substance abuse risk
In a long-term study by Harvard researchers, data support the association between childhood ADHD and substance abuse risk.
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Campus & Community
It was a very good year
With its 360th Commencement, another chapter in Harvard’s history draws to a close, as marked by highlights from this year. Reinstallation of ROTC, ongoing innovation in science and humanities, and Wynton Marsalis at Harvard top off some of the year’s historical benchmarks.
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Campus & Community
Kavanagh receives grant for HIV research
Daniel G. Kavanagh, a member of the faculty at the Ragon Institute, is one of the winners of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Explorations initiative.
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Health
Health reform may require a crisis
ABC’s medical editor Timothy Johnson, M.P.H. ’76, predicted sweeping changes to the nation’s health care system, but not before a budget calamity caused by rising health care costs forces politicians’ hands.
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Health
‘Turn down the volume’
The positive effects of mindfulness meditation on pain and working memory may result from an improved ability to regulate a crucial brain wave called the alpha rhythm. This rhythm is thought to “turn down the volume” on distracting information, which suggests that a key value of meditation may be helping the brain deal with an…
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Health
Better blood
An innovative experimental treatment for boosting the effectiveness of blood stem-cell transplants with umbilical cord blood has a favorable safety profile in long-term animal studies, according to Harvard Stem Cell Institute scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Children’s Hospital Boston.
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Health
Brain changes found in normal elders
Harvard-affiliated researchers using two brain-imaging technologies have found that apparently normal older individuals with brain deposits of amyloid beta — the primary constituent of the plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients — also had changes in brain structure similar to those seen in Alzheimer’s patients.
