Featured series 
Tag: Medicine
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Health
First targeted therapy for melanoma brings hope
In a demonstration that even some of the most hard-to-treat tumors may one day succumb to therapies aimed at molecular “weak points,” researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report the first instance in which metastatic melanoma has been driven into remission by a targeted therapy.
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Campus & Community
Ho-Am Prize, ‘Korea’s Nobel,’ is awarded to BWH’s Charles Lee
Assistant Professor of Pathology Charles Lee of Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) has been named the recipient of the 2008 Ho-Am Prize in Medicine.
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Health
Genetics key in new knowledge about complex diseases
Genetic researchers crossed a critical threshold last year in their ability to understand complex diseases, posting a number of new discoveries that advanced knowledge of ailments caused by small contributions from multiple genes, the environment, and other causes.
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Health
Haiti clinic makes real gains
“13 October 2003.” Saintyl Louistess remembered the exact date she found out she had AIDS.
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Health
Louise Ivers: A higher purpose
It was January 2008 and the baby – the youngest of four children – had been brought into the clinic Ivers heads at Boucan Carré, Haiti, after a period of vomiting and not eating well.
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Health
Panel discusses history, future of alternative therapies
The history of alternative and complementary medical treatments can inform the medicine of today. That was the message of “Sectarian (to Unorthodox to Alternative) to Complementary Medicine: What Historical Perspectives can Tell Modern Medicine,” an afternoon of talks sponsored by the Countway Library’s Center for the History of Medicine on March 26.
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Health
FDA deadlines may compromise drug safety by rushing approvals
Many medications are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the brink of congressionally mandated deadlines, and those drugs are more likely to face later regulatory intervention than those approved with greater deliberation, researchers at Harvard University have found. Drugs fast-tracked by the FDA are more likely to eventually be withdrawn from…
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Health
Scientists learn what’s ‘up’ with retinal cells
Harvard University researchers have discovered a new type of retinal cell that plays an exclusive and unusual role in mice: detecting upward motion. The cells reflect their function in the physical arrangement of their dendrites, branchlike structures on neuronal cells that form a communicative network with other dendrites and neurons in the brain.
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Health
Satcher’s goal: To help ‘people who have been left out’
David Satcher — the 16th U.S. surgeon general and co-author of “Multicultural Medicine and Health Disparities” (McGraw-Hill, 2006), was in Boston (March 13) to deliver the fourth in a 2007-08 series of lectures in Public Health Practice and Leadership sponsored by the HSPH’s Division of Health Practice.
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Health
MGH initiates Phase I of its diabetes trial
Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have initiated a Phase I clinical trial to reverse type 1 diabetes. The trial is exploring whether the promising results from the laboratory of Denise Faustman can be applied in human diabetes.
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Health
Increasing U.S. support could save a million South Africans by 2012
More that 1.2 million deaths could be prevented in South Africa over the next five years by accelerating efforts to provide access to antiretroviral therapy (ART), according to a study released March 13 in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
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Health
MGH receives Gates Foundation grant
The Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has received a five-year, $20.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand an international program investigating the biological factors underlying immune system control of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The grant provides support to the International HIV Controllers Study, which currently involves researchers from more…
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Health
Late treatment with letrozole can reduce cancer recurrence risk
Treatment with the aromatase inhibitor letrozole (Femara) can reduce the risk of breast cancer recurrence even when initiated one to seven years after a course of tamoxifen therapy. The results of a study involving women originally in the placebo arm of an international trial of letrozole will appear in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and…
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Health
Inhaled TB vaccine more effective than traditional shot
A novel aerosol version of the most common tuberculosis (TB) vaccine, administered directly to the lungs as an oral mist, offers significantly better protection against the disease in experimental animals than a comparable dose of the traditional injected vaccine, researchers report this week (March 12) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).…
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Health
Sobering look at ‘mind-body connection’
Mind-body medicine goes by many names today — including holistic, complementary, or alternative medicine. Regardless of what it’s called, many people embrace the ideas behind the mind-body connection and its effect on health, sometimes despite a lack of supporting scientific evidence. In her recently published book, “The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine” (W.W.…
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Health
President testifies for increase in NIH funding
With the careers of a generation of young researchers threatened by five years of flat National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, Harvard President Drew Faust and leaders of six other major research institutions were in Washington Tuesday (March 11) calling on Congress to repair the “Broken Pipeline” through which breakthroughs in the biomedical sciences should…
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Health
HMS, Broad Institute team works to better understand mitochondria
Why do nearly 1 million people taking cholesterol-lowering statins often experience muscle cramps? Why is it that in the rare case when a diabetic takes medication for intestinal worms, his glucose levels improve? Is there any scientific basis for the purported health effects of green tea?
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Health
History of Women in Medicine fellowship material due March 1
The Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine (FHWIM) is offering two fellowships to support research conducted at the Center for the History of Medicine and its Archives for Women in Medicine, located at Harvard Medical School’s Countway Library.
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Health
A doctor without borders
Oleksiy Skrynnyk was just a carefree 9-year-old, his fishing rod slung over his shoulder as he walked home from his favorite pond. He never saw the low-hanging power line. Twenty-two hundred volts shot through his body, entering his right shoulder and exiting out his left foot. The electrocution burns were extensive. His right arm was…
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Health
Joint Harvard-Brazil program fights entrenched diseases
Recently (Jan. 6-21), 15 Harvard and 16 Brazilian students participated in an intensive experience: the first Harvard-Brazil Collaborative Course on Infectious Diseases. The course, which was offered by the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Santa Casa de Misericórdia de São Paulo Medical School (FCMSCSP) with the support of the Harvard University Brazil…
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Health
Americans split on socialized medicine
During the course of the presidential nomination campaigns, some candidates’ health care plans have been described as “socialized medicine.” Historically, that phrase has been used to criticize health reform proposals in the United States.
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Health
Newly identified gene variants associated with prostate cancer risk
Three studies presenting newly identified genetic variants that are associated with increased susceptibility to prostate cancer were published recently (Feb. 10) on the advance online site of Nature Genetics. The 10 gene variants double the number of known variants associated with risk of the disease and are the result of genomewide association studies.
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Health
Anxiety linked to overestimation of breast cancer risks
Elevated levels of anxiety may cause women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), the most common form of noninvasive breast cancer, to overestimate their risk of recurrence or dying from breast cancer, suggests a study led by researchers at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
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Health
BWH-led tuberculosis research project receives $14M NIH grant
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Partners In Health (PIH) have received a grant of $14 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health to study multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). The goal of the project is…
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Health
Ethicists, philosophers discuss selling of human organs
In nearly every country in the world, there is a shortage of kidneys for transplantation. In the United States, around 73,000 people are on waiting lists to receive a kidney. Yet 4,000 die every year before the lifesaving organ is available.
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Arts & Culture
Pauletta Washington honored
There was no debating the glamour of the Harvard Foundation’s black-tie, red-carpet premiere of “The Great Debaters,” starring and directed by Denzel Washington, at the Harvard Film Archive at the Carpenter Center. Close to 200 students, faculty, and staff attended the Dec. 18 premiere, which was followed by a lively question-and-answer session with Washington and…
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Health
Cancer stem cells can be targeted for destruction
It’s increasingly believed among scientists that nearly every cancer contains small populations of highly dangerous cells — cancer stem cells — that can initiate a cancer, drive its progression, and create endless copies of themselves. On the theory that targeting these cells might be an effective therapeutic strategy, researchers around the world have begun isolating…
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Health
Research in brief
Major differences in protocols used to determine brain death; Harvard researchers achieve stem cell milestone; Consortium links chromosome abnormality to autism disorders; Blocking HIV infection; Oral osteoporosis meds appear to reduce the risk of jaw degradation; Six new genetic variants linked to heart-disease risk factor; Gene variation may elevate risk of liver tumor in some…
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Health
Drug helps certain brain tumor patients live longer
People who receive high doses of the chemotherapy drug methotrexate to treat a certain type of brain tumor appear to live longer than people receiving other treatments, according to research published in the Jan. 29 issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
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Campus & Community
Cancer research pioneer Judah Folkman dies suddenly at 74
Cancer research pioneer Judah Folkman, the Andrus Professor of Pediatric Surgery and professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), died on Jan. 14 of a heart attack. Folkman, who was also the director of the Vascular Biology Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, was 74.