Featured series 
Tag: Pain
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Health
Research suggests role for anthrax in fighting pain
In search for alternatives to opioids, Medical School researchers have hit on an unlikely candidate.
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Health
Nerve-signaling pathway that drives sustained pain found
Harvard researchers have identified in mice a set of neurons responsible for sustained pain and pain-coping behaviors. The new study is the first one to map out how these responses arise outside the brain.
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Health
Survey of oncologists finds knowledge gap on medical marijuana
Harvard psychiatrist Ilana Braun found a knowledge gap on medical marijuana in a survey of oncologists nationwide.
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Health
Research rebuts idea that epidurals prolong labor
A study by BIDMC has found that long-standing concerns on the effects of epidurals on the second stage of labor may be misguided and out of date.
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Health
Taking care on painkillers for kids
Harvard addiction specialist on FDA’s OxyContin OK: We have to respond to both patients and population health, a tricky task.
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Health
Creating pain-sensing neurons
Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard’s Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology have successfully converted mouse and human skin cells into pain-sensing neurons that respond to a number of stimuli that cause acute and inflammatory distress.
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Health
Doctors can feel their patients’ pain
A novel experiment illuminates the importance of the doctor-patient relationship, providing the first data into the underlying neurobiology of the caregiver.
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Health
Pain relief for patients in Uganda
A collaboration between anesthesiologists at Massachusetts General Hospital and overworked doctors at an African hospital provides training in a technique that can soothe patients during surgical recoveries.
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Health
Where (tiny) form follows function
A professor studies how the structure of large proteins influences how we feel heat, examining how the proteins behave and interact with molecules around them.
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Campus & Community
When one sentence just won’t do
A Harvard College senior discusses the difficulties of explaining her senior thesis in the sciences, particularly since the topic can make people cringe.
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Health
MGH researchers develop potentially safer general anesthetic
News release — Mass. General team develops potentially safer general anesthetic A team of Harvard Medical School (HMS) researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has developed a new general anesthetic that may be safer for critically ill patients. In the August issue of Anesthesiology, they describe preclinical studies of the drug called MOC-etomidate – a…
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Health
Simple bedside test improves diagnosis of chronic back pain
A simple and inexpensive method of assessing pain, developed by Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), is better than currently used techniques for distinguishing neuropathic pain – pain caused by damage to the nervous system — from other types of chronic back pain. Being able to more precisely determine the underlying nature of the…
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Health
Pain is more intense when inflicted on purpose
Researchers at Harvard University have discovered that our experience of pain depends in part on whether we think someone caused the pain intentionally. Participants in a study who believed they were getting an electrical shock from another person on purpose, rather than accidentally, rated the shock as more painful than those receiving the same shock…
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Health
Cerebral cortex thicker in people with migraines
People who suffer from migraine headaches have differences in an area of the brain that helps process sensory information, including pain, according to a study published in the November 20, 2007, issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study found that part of the cortex area of the brain…
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Science & Tech
The cultural politics of pain, from Percodan to Kevorkian
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, 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. Keith Wailoo, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of History and founding director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers University, began a lecture…
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Campus & Community
Sensitivity to pain explained
Stabbing back pain or the aches of arthritis send some people to bed in misery while the same distress seems easily tolerated by others.
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Campus & Community
Migraine auras and heart disease linked – risks high for women
Marsha T. saw the lights of pain coming. They flashed and zigzagged before her eyes. Her visual field shrank into a tunnel. A registered nurse, she knew what was next. In about 30 minutes, a familiar sharp, pulsating pain ripped through her head. Now 48 years old, she had been suffering from migraine headaches with…
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Health
All placebos not created equal
While researchers usually use placebos in clinical trials to test the effectiveness of a new treatment, a trial reported in the Feb. 1, 2006 British Medical Journal pitted one placebo against another.
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Health
Study says women don’t experience pain, anxiety during mammograms
“I think it’s an old wives tale that mammograms hurt,” says the study’s lead author, Alice Domar, PhD, director of the Mind/ Body Center for Women’s Health at Boston IVF and senior psychologist in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. According to the American Cancer Society, one-third to one-half…
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Science & Tech
Study says children with cancer often suffer needlessly
“Since caregivers are very committed to curing their patients, it may be difficult for them to recognize when to incorporate palliative care into treatments, even when there’s little hope of cure,” notes Joanne Wolfe, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and lead author of a report, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, that…