Focus: Hidden - Boston Metro

• share
• favorite_border

The Hawaiian cultural group Hālau o Keikiali`i, internationally known for live performances that tell the story of the Hawaiian people, will visit Wellesley College Saturday, September 17 for a main-stage performance entitled Ho`okupu: The Offering. The show begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Jewett Art Center Auditorium. It will cap off a weeklong Hula residency.

• share
• favorite_border

A new analysis of 100 million Medicare records from US adults aged 65 and older reveals rising healthcare costs for infections associated with some disease-causing bacteria, such as Legionella, which can live inside drinking water distribution systems and household plumbing

• share
• favorite_border

As researchers seek cognitively normal people on the way to Alzheimer’s to fill clinical prevention trials, they face the delicate task of disclosing a highly elevated, but not certain, risk of developing the disease to thousands of people. Scientists look to cancer research for cues as they recruit for the first of such trials.

• share
• favorite_border

The glycemic index value of a food can vary by 20 percent within an individual and 25 percent among individuals, according to the results of a controlled feeding trial in 63 healthy adults. The findings suggest glycemic index has limited value in predicting how foods affect blood sugar levels.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School have found that patients who were prescribed corticosteroids as part of treatment for Lyme disease-associated facial paralysis had worse long-term outcomes of regaining facial function than those who were prescribed antibiotic therapy alone. Based on these findings, which were published online today in Laryngoscope, the researchers urge caution in prescribing corticosteroids to patients with acute Lyme disease-associated facial paralysis.

• share
• favorite_border

Whitehead Institute researchers have conducted the first genome-wide screen in Apicomplexa, a phylum of single-celled parasites that cause diseases such as malaria and toxoplasmosis. The screen sheds light into the vast, unstudied reaches of parasite genomes, uncovering for instance a protein common to all apicomplexans.

• share
• favorite_border

Hospitalizations for infective endocarditis, a heart valve infection often attributed to injection drug use, increased significantly among young adults, particularly whites and females. The findings shed light on the healthcare burdens and shifting demographics associated national opioid epidemic.

• share
• favorite_border

Whitehead Institute scientists have developed a method to quickly isolate mitochondria from mammalian cells and systematically measure the concentrations of mitochondrial metabolites. Mitochondrial dysfunction is found in several disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, cardiovascular disease, and mitochondrial diseases. Until now, peering into the inner metabolic workings of these vital organelles has been very challenging.

• share
• favorite_border

Starting dialysis treatment for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) should be a shared decision made by an informed patient based on discussions with a physician and family members. However, many older dialysis patients say they feel voiceless in the decision-making process and are unaware of more conservative management approaches that could help them avoid initiating a treatment that reduces their quality of life, according to a study led by Tufts University researchers.

• share
• favorite_border

Move-in day for the Olin College Class of 2020 officially kicked off Saturday, August 27, 2016.

• share
• favorite_border

A contact lens designed to deliver medication gradually to the eye could improve outcomes for patients with conditions requiring treatment with eye drops, which are often imprecise and difficult to self-administer. In a study published online today in Ophthalmology, a team of researchers have shown that a novel contact lens-based system, which uses a strategically placed drug polymer film to deliver medication gradually to the eye, is at least as effective, and possibly more so, as daily latanoprost eye drops in a pre-clinical model for glaucoma.

• share
• favorite_border

There are no established drugs to improve angiogenesis in diabetes. However, researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center now have identified a gene called CITED2 in a molecular pathway that may offer targets for drugs that treat these conditions by strengthening angiogenesis.

• share
• favorite_border

BOSTON – In a special report released August 23 in the journal Radiology, a team of researchers including Deborah Levine, MD, Director of Obstetric & Gynecologic ultrasound at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), documented the brain abnormalities associated with congenital Zika in 45 confirmed and presumed cases from northeastern Brazil.

• share
• favorite_border

Babson Executive and Enterprise Education has established Launch and Grow: The Kenyan Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Program​, a first of its kind high-impact program for women entrepreneurs from the region.​

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists from Harvard Medical School have identified a key instigator of nerve cell damage in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a progressive and incurable neurodegenerative disorder.  Researchers say the findings of their study, published Aug. 5 in the journal Science, may lead to new therapies to halt the progression of the uniformly fatal disease that affects more than 30,000 Americans.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center now have demonstrated that umbilical cells from children of obese or overweight mothers show impaired expression of key genes regulating cell energy and metabolism, compared to similar cells from babies of non-obese mothers.

• share
• favorite_border

By discouraging the use of medications that can cause dizziness or loss of balance and prescribing medications known to prevent bone loss, clinicians can help patients lower their risk of falls and fractures.

• share
• favorite_border

But some studies are showing that these reactive oxygen species (ROS) molecules sometimes can aid in maintaining health—findings now boosted by a surprising discovery from Joslin Diabetes Center researchers.

• share
• favorite_border

The Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network is churning out serial data on how Alzheimer’s disease develops in a given person over many years, and at the same time transforming how therapeutic trials are being done on this disease.

• share
• favorite_border

Alzforum reports some of the major highlights from the recent Keystone symposium on the role of microglia in neurodegenerative disease.

• share
• favorite_border

Neuroscientists have long known that brain cells communicate with each other through the release of tiny bubbles packed with neurotransmitters—a fleet of vessels docked along neuronal ends ready to launch when a trigger arrives. Now, a study conducted in mice by neurobiologists at Harvard Medical School reveals that dismantling the docking stations that house these signal-carrying vessels does not fully disrupt signal transmission between cells.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from the Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear have identified new underlying mechanisms of proptosis, or bulging of the eyes, in patients with acute thyroid eye disease. In a report published online in the journal Ophthalmology, the researchers describe vascular growth factors causing an abnormal proliferation of blood vessels, as well as the rare formation of lymphatic vessels, that may contribute to the dangerous swelling and inflammation that occurs in the orbits of these patients. The findings point to new potential targets for non-surgical therapies to decompress the eye in the acute phase of thyroid eye disease.

• share
• favorite_border

Genetic testing has greatly improved physicians’ ability to detect potentially lethal heart anomalies among asymptomatic family members of people who suffer cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death. But a study from Harvard Medical School published in the Aug. 18 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine shows that over the last decade these lifesaving tools may have disproportionately misdiagnosed one cardiac condition — hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) – in black Americans.

• share
• favorite_border

A new book, Practice for Life: Making Decisions in College, co-written by faculty members at two of the country’s most prestigious liberal arts colleges, is poised to change the way these students and their parents approach this next stage of their life.

• share
• favorite_border

In the past year, the Global Alzheimer’s Platform and the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia have moved quickly, and jointly, to pave the way toward more, faster, cheaper trials. Will they be better, too?

• share
• favorite_border

Harvard Medical School scientists have identified a new family of proteins that virtually all bacteria use to build and maintain their cell walls. The discovery of a second set of cell wall synthesizers can help pave the way for much-needed therapies that target the cell wall as a way to kill harmful bacteria, said study leaders David Rudner and Thomas Bernhardt.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Whitehead Institute scientists have identified a potential antifungal mechanism that could enable combination therapy with fluconazole, one of today’s most commonly prescribed fungal infection treatments. Severe, invasive fungal infections have a mortality rate of 30-50% and cause an estimated 1.5 million deaths worldwide annually.

• share
• favorite_border

Genetic research is a valuable tool in understanding diseases and their prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. However, significant obstacles limit the clinical use of this knowledge to all groups. Genetic applications in healthcare must advance in a way that reduces racial and ethnic disparities.

• share
• favorite_border

Men with testicular cancer who were uninsured or on Medicaid had a higher risk of death from what is normally a curable disease than insured patients, a new study by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers found.

• share
• favorite_border

A month after announcing that two promising vaccine candidates provided mice with complete protection against the Zika virus, a research team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), in collaboration with scientists at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) and the University of São Paulo, now reports achieving complete protection against Zika virus in rhesus monkeys. The research team’s findings were published online today in the journal Science.

• share
• favorite_border

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer deaths, accounting for about a third of all tumor-related deaths. Adenocarcinomas, a non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), account for about 40 percent of cancer diagnoses, but few treatments are available for the disease. A team of investigators led by Elena Levantini, PhD, a research associate in Hematology-Oncology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, have identified a subtype of human adenocarcinoma. The research could help determine which individuals are at greatest risk of developing lung tumors that may be amenable to a new therapy to inhibit their progression.

• share
• favorite_border

The OpenNotes movement is excited to share a milestone – 10 million Americans can now read their medical notes securely online.

• share
• favorite_border

Mantis shrimp, often brightly colored and fiercely aggressive sea creatures with outsized strength, use both the ultraviolet reflectance of their color spots and chemical cues when fighting over resources, according to research led by a Tufts University doctoral candidate.

• share
• favorite_border

Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center has been named the best for cancer care in New England for the 16th straight year, and fourth overall in the country by U.S. News & World Report.

• share
• favorite_border

For the second consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report has ranked Mass. Eye and Ear as the #1 hospital in the nation for ear, nose and throat care and #1 in New England for eye care.

• share
• favorite_border

New research reveals that infection with the Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) may put some women at increased risk for developing breast cancer. The findings, published online in the July issue of the journal EBioMedicine, may have important implications for breast cancer screening and prevention.

• share
• favorite_border

Students, family, and faculty celebrate the 26 Massachusetts high school students who participated in Tufts University School of Medicine’s 2016 Teachers and High School Students program. The program provides clinical and lab experiences to students of diverse backgrounds interested in careers in medicine or science.

• share
• favorite_border

Sunil Puria, Ph.D., recently joined Massachusetts Eye and Ear as the second Amelia Peabody Scientist in the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories. Dr. Puria, an electrical engineer who trained as a postdoctoral researcher at Mass. Eye and Ear from 1991 to 1997, brings more than 20 years of experience in mathematical modeling and hearing research in both academia and industry settings back to Mass. Eye and Ear, where he will direct the OtoBiomechanics Group.

• share
• favorite_border

A number of states – including Massachusetts and New York – mandate public reporting of mortality outcomes following certain cardiac procedures. While such reporting was originally intended to increase transparency and improve quality of care, a new study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the University of Washington has shown that public reporting may in fact disincentivize physicians from offering potentially lifesaving treatment to patients who are at the greatest risk of mortality and poor outcomes. However, reforms to public reporting policies can mitigate these undesired effects, the authors report in a paper published online today in JAMA Cardiology.

• share
• favorite_border

Conducting the first large-scale, genome-wide analyses of ancient human remains from the Near East, an international team led by Harvard Medical School has illuminated the genetic identities and population dynamics of the world’s first farmers.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

A new “food-print” model that measures the per-person land requirements of different diets suggests that, with dietary changes, the U.S. could feed significantly more people from existing agricultural land.

• share
• favorite_border

”The State of Small Business in America” offers unique perspective from entrepreneurs on how to grow the U.S. business landscape

• share
• favorite_border

Jennifer K. Sun, M.D., MPH, Investigator in the Section on Vascular Biology at Joslin Diabetes Center, an Ophthalmologist in Beetham Eye Institute (BEI) at Joslin Diabetes Center and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, has been granted an RPB Physician-Scientist Award by Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB).

• share
• favorite_border

Eating more unsaturated fats in place of either dietary carbohydrate or saturated fat reduces blood sugar, insulin levels, and other metrics related to type 2 diabetes, according to a new meta-analysis of data from 102 randomised feeding trials in adults.

• share
• favorite_border

For the first time, researchers led by Tufts University engineers have integrated nano-scale sensors, electronics and microfluidics into threads – ranging from simple cotton to sophisticated synthetics – that can be sutured through multiple layers of tissue to gather diagnostic data wirelessly.