Their study, published in the August 1 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found that the relative risk of developing breast cancer in post-menopausal woman with dense breasts was 400 percent higher than in women with fatty, non-dense breast tissue, and that high versus low levels of ...
Plaques comprised of amyloid-beta are the hallmark pathology of Alzheimer’s disease. In this study, the scientists used an amyloid-degrading enzyme to clear these amyloid cobwebs from the brain - as illustrated in these treated (below) versus untreated (above) brain images. (Credit: Image courtesy of ...
"Based on these findings, physicians may be able to diagnose multiple sclerosis more accurately and identify patients at risk for developing progressive disease," said the study’s lead author, Rohit Bakshi, M.D., associate professor of neurology and radiology at Harvard Medical School and director of clinical MS-MRI at Brigham and ...
Drs. Roberto Coppari (right) and Joel Elmquist have discovered in mice that defects in the brain’s ability to respond to glucose could play a role in the development of non-insulin dependent (type 2) diabetes. (Credit: Image courtesy of UT Southwestern Medical Center) The new study, ...
But now, research led by scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Oregon Health & Science University has identified a third abnormality that could play an important role in the development of obesity-induced Type 2 diabetes. Reported in the journal Nature, which appears in its Advance Online format ...
Researchers have pinpointed a genetic variant associated with human height -- the first consistent genetic link to be reported. (Credit: Image designed by Bang Wong, Broad Institute) The findings, published in Nature Genetics, stem from a large-scale effort led by scientists at the Broad Institute ...
An ordinary laboratory flask was used to extract enzymes, the catalysts used to synthesize an antibiotic natural product in Brad Moore’s laboratory. (Credit: University of California - San Diego) A team led by Qian Cheng and Bradley Moore of Scripps was able to synthesize an ...
Study author Ichiro Wakabayashi also found that the older men who participated — all in their 50s — were more susceptible to the blood pressure-boosting effects of heavy drinking than younger men. While there are signs that drinking can be good for the heart and boost good cholesterol levels, “this ...
The Institute of Medicine estimates that 1.5 million medication errors occur each year in the United States and poor labeling is one cause of the mistakes. While the Food and Drug Administration has some standards on what prescription labels must include, few regulations guide the format of the information, said ...
Using a mouse model, the scientists found that a chronic strain of lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) targeted a type of stromal cells in the lymphoid organs called fibroblastic reticular cells (FRC). In contrast, an acute strain of the virus had little effect on the FRC cells. FRC provide a ...
Electron micrograph of a single mitochondrion showing the organized arrangement of the protein matrix and the inner mitochondrial membranes. (Credit: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services/National Institutes of Health) Now, reporting in the September 21 issue of the journal Cell, researchers from Harvard Medical ...
New findings published by Drs. Kathleen Merikangas from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Ronald Kessler from Harvard Medical School and colleagues in the October 2007 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry show that more than half of U.S. adults have a mental or physical condition that ...
Previous in vitro studies suggested that leptin receptors, which are found in tissues throughout the body including the pancreas as well as the brain, mediate leptin-induced inhibition of insulin secretion in islet cells, also known as beta cells. "We wanted to further our understanding of leptin and its role in ...
The study used a combination of capsaicin -- the substance that makes chili peppers hot -- and a drug called QX-314. This combination exploits a characteristic unique to pain-sensing neurons, also called nociceptors, in order to block their activity without impairing signals from other cells. In contrast, most pain ...
No single gene was expressed differently in infants with BPD, but genes in the chromatin remodeling pathway (yellow squares) more often fall below the line, meaning they were "turned on" less often. (Credit: Image courtesy of Children’s Hospital Boston) ...
Androgen deprivation therapy is frequently used to treat high-risk localized prostate cancer. Studies have shown that androgen deprivation therapy, when used with external beam radiation therapy, improves survival in patients with advanced and localized prostate cancer. But the use of androgen deprivation therapy can also lead to the development of ...
Writing in the European Heart Journal today [1], the authors say that clinicians should be aware of the relationships between blood pressure and type 2 diabetes to optimise the management of patients at increased risk for cardiovascular disease. The researchers from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and ...
It is characterized by a dilated aorta and if allowed to develop unchecked it can rupture, an event with a high rate of mortality. In a new study, Guo-Ping Shi and colleagues at, Harvard Medical School, Boston, have demonstrated a role for immune cells known as mast cells in the ...
Comprehensive analysis of DNA from human lung tumors uncovers more than 50 common genetic abnormalities, less than half involve known cancer genes. (Credit: Image by Broad Institute Communications Group) While one-third of these regions contain genes already known to play important roles in lung cancer, ...
In a major study of over 27,000 women in the Women’s Health Study, researchers assessed a variety of risk factors and different levels of exercise in women who were followed for 11 years for new diagnosis of heart attack and stroke. "Regular physical activity is enormously beneficial in ...
This is notably apparent in soldiers in combat zones, medical residents and even new parents. Now there’s a neurological basis for this theory, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Medical School. In the first neural investigation into what happens to the emotional brain without sleep, ...
"The lifetime risk of heart failure is estimated at 20 percent (one in five) for both men and women aged 40 years," according to background information in the article. Studies have suggested that the risk of hypertension, coronary heart disease, hypercholesterolemia (high blood cholesterol) and mortality can be reduced with ...
A team led by John V. Frangioni at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of the Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, has developed a contrast agent that makes visible the microcalcifications related to malignant breast tumors. The researchers report in the journal Angewandte Chemie that in validation trials in ...
Fibromyalgia affects approximately 3.4 percent of women and 0.5 percent of men in the United States, according to background information in the article. Patients with fibromyalgia experience chronic pain throughout their bodies for at least three months, along with specific sites of tenderness. Causes and mechanisms are poorly understood. "Even ...
Researchers from Harvard Medical School and the non-governmental organisation Partners In Health, both based in Boston, USA set out to see if HIV diagnosis was delayed because doctors missed opportunities to test people who were at risk of HIV during clinic visits. The team works with the Haitian Ministry of Health ...
Now a study led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), helps explain the source of these problems. Published in the December 2007 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, the findings offer the first evidence that a gene known as atrogin-1 plays a key role in statin-related ...
Frank Schroeder inserts a natural product sample into a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. NMR spectroscopy has evolved into the most important tool for identifying new biologically active compounds. (Credit: Jason Koski / Cornell University Photography) Researchers at ...
Defining the peptides identified by T cells mediating autoimmunity and immune responses against invading microbes, as well as harnessing this information for the design of therapeutics and vaccines, is an area of intensive investigation. New insight into these matters is provided in the November issue of the Journal of Clinical ...
After invading its neighbor, a cancerous cell begins to acidify and die in a compartment marked by a green ring. (Credit: Michael Overholtzer, courtesy of Harvard Medical School) Sometimes healthy cells commit suicide. In the 1970s, scientists showed that a type of programmed cell death ...
In their experiments, Sah and colleagues studied a region of the amygdala, the brain’s emotion-processing region known to mediate the emotional and stress-related aspects of pain. Researchers had long known that these amygdala-based processes were controlled by neurons that originated in the brainstem and that were regulated by noradrenaline. Sah ...