Socks in the sock drawer, shirts in the shirt drawer, the time-honored lessons of helping organize one's clothes learned in youth. But what parts of the brain are used to encode such categories as socks, shirts, or any other item, and how does such learning take place? New research from Harvard Medical School (HMS) investigators has identified an area of the brain where such memories are found.
Harvard Medical School, through a grant by the National Institute of Mental Health, recruited 1,043 survivors of Hurricane Katrina to create the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group. The Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group is providing ongoing information to help monitor the pace of recovery of the more than two million families whose lives were disrupted by Hurricane Katrina.
Harvard Medical School researchers have identified a DNA segment on chromosome 8 that is a major risk factor for prostate cancer, especially in African American men. The paper appears in the August 21 electronic edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A protein once thought to play a role only in the immune system could hold a clue to one of the great puzzles of neuroscience: how do the highly malleable and plastic brains of youth settle down into a relatively stable adult set of neuronal connections? Researchers report that adult mice lacking the immune system protein paired-immunoglobulin like receptor-B (PirB) had brains that retained the plasticity of much younger brains.
By examining more than 120,000 children under age 6 in Massachusetts over 22 years, a newly published study shows that young children"”especially infants"”are now more likely to be overweight. This study was based at the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and appears in the July issue of Obesity.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have discovered a new cancer-promoting role for a gene potentially involved in breast, liver, and other kinds of cancers. Their discovery that the gene YAP can transform mammary epithelial cells opens the door to understanding how a novel cell growth controlling pathway first discovered in fruit flies might be important in human cancers.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital have identified how a molecular switch regulates fat and cholesterol production, a step that may help advance treatments for metabolic syndrome, the constellation of diseases that includes high cholesterol, obesity, type II diabetes, and high blood pressure.
Using a novel mouse model to study how the immune system's fighter cells respond to invaders in the genital tract during the initial stage of infection, Harvard Medical School researchers have found a way to track immunity against Chlamydia. The new findings could help hasten the development of vaccines for Chlamydia and other STDs.
To tackle privacy, business, societal, and technical issues surrounding personal health records "“ a key part of the healthcare reform debate - leaders from industry, academia, medicine and government will team up for the first meeting on Personally Controlled Health Records Infrastructure (PCHRI 2006), hosted by Harvard Medical School Center for Biomedical Informatics.
Researchers in Boston studied elderly male twins and found that those who smoke or have a history of smoking had an increased risk of developing age-related macular degeneration as compared to those who never smoked. At the same time, those who ate more fish and had diets with higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids reduced their risk of this blinding disease.
A 20-year study of women in the Nurses' Health Study has shown that Type 2 diabetes is associated with primary open angle glaucoma (POAG), the most common form of glaucoma, accounting for about 60 to 70% of all glaucomas. The study is published in the July issue of the journal Ophthalmology.
Winston Patrick Kuo, DDS, MS, DMSc, post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Oral and Developmental Biology at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and colleagues tested nearly all the available commercial and "in-house" gene expression microarray platforms for cross-platform and cross-laboratory comparisons.
An ancient avenue for producing cellular energy, the glycolytic pathway, could provide a surprisingly rich target for anti-cancer therapies.
Harvard Medical School researchers have discovered one way that a hardy disease-causing bacteria could be surviving in the lungs of chronically infected cystic fibrosis (CF) patients.
New insights into how a subpopulation of helper T-cells provides immunity and promotes survival following infection with an AIDS-like virus offer a new means of predicting an AIDS vaccine's effectiveness, a discovery that could help scientists as they test these vaccines in clinical trials.
A seldom-studied mental illness called Intermittent Explosive Disorder, characterized by recurrent episodes of angry and potentially violent outbursts"”seen in cases of road rage or spousal abuse"”has been found to be much more common than previously thought. Depending upon how broadly it is defined, this disorder affects as many as 7.3 percent of adults, or 16 million Americans, in their lifetimes.
Just as humans undergo daily stress, so do our individual cells. The cellular variety, called oxidative stress, is caused by the build-up of free radicals, which over time inflict damage linked to aging and age related diseases such as Alzheimer's. Researchers have now defined a molecular signaling pathway by which oxidative stress triggers cell death.
Harvard Medical School announced today that is has signed a multimillion-dollar license agreement with Merck & Co., Inc. to develop potential therapies for macular degeneration, an eye disease that affects older people and can lead to blindness.
For the first time, renowned basic and clinical researchers, physicians and educators in the field of complementary or integrative medicine will come together to participate in a global forum to present and discuss new, peer-reviewed research at the first North American Research Conference on Complementary & Integrative Medicine.
Scientists at Schepens Eye Research Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, are the first to discover a switch inside blood vessel cells that controls angiogenesis (new blood vessel growth). The switch, they learned, is turned on and off by the balance between two enzymes (known as PI3K and PLCg) that compete for the use of the same lipid membrane to fulfill opposite missions, growth and regression, respectively.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) report in the April 23 issue of Nature that they have identified neurons that encode the values that subjects assign to different items. The activity of these neurons might facilitate the process of decision-making that occurs when someone chooses between different goods.
The Harvard Medical School (HMS), in conjunction with ImproveHealthcare.org, will host Newt Gingrich, who will discuss cost effective quality improvement strategies for national healthcare. The event will be held at HMS in the Tosteson Medical Education Center on Thursday, March 30.
On March 28, in an embargoed media teleconference, Dr. Goldman and co-author Richard Frank, PhD, the Margaret T. Morris professor of health economics in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School, will discuss key findings and take reporter questions.
A new discovery has found that Pin1, an enzyme previously shown to prevent the formation of the tangle-like lesions found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, also plays a pivotal role in guarding against the development of amyloid peptide plaques, the second brain lesion that characterizes Alzheimer's.
When bacterial pathogens attack the surface of a cell, vaccine-induced antibodies can mount a formidable defense and fend off the bad bugs. The trouble comes when antibodies cannot recognize the pathogen because the bacteria have infected the cell and are hidden, growing inside the cell's wall.
Health policies designed to curb inappropriate medication prescribing can have the unintended effect of increasing racial disparities in access to appropriate care.
In a study designed to assess whether alerts faxed to physicians can help to improve patient adherence to antidepressant medications, researchers have concluded that fax interventions to prescribers did not positively affect rates of patient adherence.
High cholesterol affects approximately 50 million Americans and is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. In The Harvard Medical School Guide to Lowering Your Cholesterol (McGraw-Hill; April 2005), Mason Freeman, MD, provides advice on reaching and maintaining healthy cholesterol levels.
Independent research teams have identified a master protein that sheds light on one of neurobiology's biggest mysteries"”how neurons change as a result of individual experiences. The research identifies a central protein that regulates the growth and pruning of neurons throughout life in response to environmental stimuli.
In the largest study ever to quantify caregiver burden and the widower effect, researchers found that for people aged 65 and older, hospitalization of a spouse can harm the wellbeing of his or her partner and significantly contribute to that partner's death. This risk also varies with the ill spouse's diagnosis.
Harvard Medical School investigators announce in today's online Journal of Proteome Research that they have created the first publicly available library of reliably expressible proteins of a human disease, in this case for breast cancer.
A Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care"“led research team was today awarded one of four new national Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) grants from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, one of the National Institutes of Health.
While researchers usually use placebos in clinical trials to test the effectiveness of a new treatment, this trial pitted one placebo against another. "It's upside down research," said Ted Kaptchuk.
Beginning Jan. 10, Harvard Medical School, through a $1 million grant by the National Institute of Mental Health, will begin recruiting a statistically representative sample of 2,000 survivors of Hurricane Katrina to serve in the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group.
A press briefing on the launching of the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group initiative will be held this Thursday, January 5.
A perspective article by Stephen Soumerai, professor in the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention (of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care), suggests that the new Medicare Drug Benefit may be harmful to the health of the poor, elderly, and disabled
An editorial by Richard Platt says that an unintended effect of the Medicare Drug Benefit could be the creation of the world's most valuable resource for understanding how drugs are used, as well as their risks and benefits, especially among the elderly and chronically ill.
Harvey Simon, Harvard Medical School associate professor of medicine and founding member of the Harvard Cardiovascular Health Center, has outlined such a program in his new book, The No Sweat Exercise Plan: A Simple Way to Lose Weight and Improve Your Health Without Spending Hours in the Gym.
HSDM researcher Martin Nweeia answers a marine science question: why does the "unicorn," whale have an 8-foot-long tooth emerging from its head? Nweeia will be presenting his conclusions at the 16th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in San Diego.
In a survey of approximately 930,000 ambulatory care patients, researchers found that 42 percent received prescriptions for drugs with Black Box Warnings, the FDA's strongest label for high-risk medication.
The Harvard Medical School Division of Medical Ethics will host a public forum, titled "The Politicization of Science," which will bring together opinion leaders to discuss the effect of politics on science. The event will be held at HMS on Wednesday, Nov. 9.
Increasingly, evidence supports the notion that events occurring in the earliest stages of human development "“ even before birth "“ may influence the occurrence of major conditions, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma, cancers osteoporosis and mental disorders.
The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, along with co-sponsors Swiss Re and the United Nations Development Programme, today released a study showing that climate change will significantly affect the health of humans and ecosystems and these impacts will have economic consequences.
Former vice president Al Gore delivered a speech about global warming upon accepting the Global Environmental Citizen Award from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.
Tips from Harvard Health Publications on Halloween candy, costumes, Jack-o'-lanterns, and home safety.
In a new book, Harvard Medical School's Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart, of the University of California"“Berkeley address a key problem in evolutionary theory that has puzzled scientists from Darwin on and which is now under intense scrutiny by proponents of intelligent design: where do the big jumps come from in evolution?
The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, along with co-sponsors Swiss Re and the United Nations Development Programme, will hold a news conference and teleconference to release findings of a study on climate change and its relationship to health of people, ecosystems and the economy.
Former Vice President Al Gore has been chosen as the recipient of the 2005 Global Environmental Citizen Award by the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.
On Jan. 1, 2006, several categories of medications will be explicitly excluded from Medicare's new prescription drug benefit, including benzodiazepines, which are listed as an "essential medication" with the World Health Organization.
Just as hurricanes in the Gulf states and Guatemala have raised the risks of cholera outbreaks, researchers have identified a new type of antibiotic against the cholera bacteria.
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