Health

While it has been suspected for some time that being overweight could potentially increase a person’s chances of a stroke, a study published in the Dec. 9, 2002, issue of…

It was previously known that only slightly over half of the patients with adult T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) could be cured with chemotherapy. Adult ALL patients often undergo transplants…

A nationwide survey examined the views of 831 physicians in April-July 2002 and 1,207 adults in April-June 2002. Some 42 percent of the public and more than one-third of U.S.…

Phthalates are a class of compounds used to hold color and scent in many cosmetics and personal care items such as soaps, detergents, skin preparations and aftershave lotions, and they…

An ongoing clinical study by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists suggests that a three-drug therapy, which includes a novel medication called sirolimus, reduces graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) in stem cell transplant patients…

Most cancer deaths are caused not by the original or primary tumor but by the metastasizing of tumor cells to other organs. Until now, cancer specialists have viewed the development…

Researchers followed 381 people to “identify predictors of time to prostate specific death following external radiation therapy.” “The results of this study give us a better understanding of what form…

Nearly one in 13 children in America has asthma. The National Institutes of Health reports that the prevalence of asthma around the world has doubled in the last 15 years,…

New findings by researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center visualize the protein that is mutated in most individuals having a form of diabetes called Maturity Onset Diabetes of the Young (MODY).…

Women in a study who reported eating nuts at least five times per week reduced their risk of type 2 diabetes by almost 30 percent compared to those who rarely…

C-reactive protein’s claim to fame is based on its power to predict a woman’s risk of developing heart attack and stroke. In fact, high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) were…

Mice with the kind of brain damage caused by strokes or cerebral palsy received implants of stem cells that resulted in the spontaneous replacement of many of the missing cells,…

A study followed 83 chronic tonsillitis sufferers over a three-year period. Brigham and Women’s Hospital researchers found that removing the tonsils was ultimately more effective than antibiotic treatments because those…

Obesity is closely associated with insulin resistance and is one of the leading risk factors for type 2 diabetes. Both affect more than 50 percent of the U.S. population. Little…

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health rigorously assessed the diets of more than 100,000 men and women and found that the reduction in risk was nearly twice as…

Previous research suggests that patients may live longer if they are under a cardiologist’s care while hospitalized for myocardial infarction. In a new study, John Ayanian, Harvard Medical School associate…

Exposure to lead is determined by blood tests, and measured in micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set a “level of…

According to the American Cancer Society, more than 190,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer annually. It is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women today. Using data from…

In the United States, one in every three adults 65 years old or older falls each year, with hip fractures resulting in the greatest number of deaths and most serious…

A finding by Harvard Medical School researchers adds a new wrinkle to the story of Parkinson’s disease and insight into how failure to dispose of proteins can wreak havoc on…

In the October 2002 issue of the journal Nature Medicine, Bruce and Barbara Furie, both Harvard Medical School professors of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, reportrf on the…

When does long-term memory develop? This was a natural question for Conor Liston, a Harvard senior, and his mentor Jerome Kagan, Starch Research Professor of Psychology. Liston conducted experiments under…

In a study, almost half of the people who wore an antidepressant skin patch recovered after only six weeks, and many of them “showed remarkable improvement much sooner,” according to…

For the past four decades, researchers have poked and prodded Escherichia coli and Listeria monocytogenes – the basic science trade names of sometimes deadly bugs – to discover how they…

Psychologists are at odds over the idea that people can forget traumatic events then “recover” intact memories of the trauma years later. On one side are clinicians, who observe that painful memories can be repressed, banished from a trauma survivor’s consciousness until they’re “recovered” with the help of certain psychotherapeutic techniques in adulthood. Memory researchers, on the other hand, say that people don’t repress traumatic events.

Out of a group of 80,000 women surveyed, those who regularly took acetaminophen or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) – and had no previous history of high blood pressure – had…

A team of scientists at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine and The Forsyth Institute in Boston believes it has found the answer to how bodily organs are formed. And…

Investigators from Harvard Medical School and London’s Hammersmith Hospital have found a way to use the bacterium Listeria along with Escherichia coli to fight disease instead of causing it. In…

Perimenopause is the period leading up to menopause. The World Health Organization defines perimenopause as the phase during which hormonal, biological, and clinical changes begin. Studies have shown that up…

A pool of 44,452 men from the Health Professionals’ Follow-Up Study were monitored via questionnaire every two years from 1986 to 1998 to determine potential coronary heart disease risk factors…