Attention, undivided

Each day, an average of nine people are killed in the United States and more than 1,000 injured by drivers doing something other than driving. The totals—3,300 U.S. deaths and 387,000 injuries in 2011—show that laws in many states banning texting and hand-held cellphone use while driving aren’t getting the job done. Jay Winsten, Frank Stanton Director of the School of Public Health’s Center for Health Communication and associate dean for Read more...

Using clay to grow bone

Researchers from Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) are the first to report that synthetic silicate nanoplatelets (also known as layered clay) can induce stem cells to become bone cells without the need of additional bone-inducing factors. Synthetic silicates are made up of simple or complex salts of silicic acids, and have been used extensively for various commercial and industrial applications, such as food additives, glass Read more...

Mourning that vexes the future

The loss of a loved one is an especially painful and disruptive event. A study by Harvard researchers shows that, for a small number of people, the sorrow that comes with the death of a spouse or partner can lead to problems not only in remembering the past, but also in imagining the future. As described in a paper published last month in Clinical Psychological Science, Professor of Psychology Richard McNally and clinical psychology graduate stud Read more...

Making old hearts younger

Two Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers — a stem cell biologist and a practicing cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital — have identified a protein in the blood of mice and humans that may prove to be the first effective treatment for the form of age-related heart failure that affects millions of Americans. When the protein, called GDF-11, was injected into old mice, which develop thickened heart walls in a manner similar t Read more...

Lower health care costs may last

A slowdown in the growth of U.S. health care costs could mean savings of as much as 0 billion on Medicare spending over the next decade, Harvard economists say. In a paper published in the May issue of Health Affairs, David Cutler, the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, and co-author Nikhil Sahni, a senior researcher in Harvard’s Economics Department, point to several factors, including a decline in the development of new drugs and t Read more...

Giants behind, challenges ahead

Smallpox is dead, polio is teetering, and life expectancies are way up, but on the other side of the ledger are new illnesses such as HIV and a global obesity epidemic that is spreading diabetes, heart disease, and other lifestyle-related ailments. Faculty, students, and friends of the Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of Global Health and Population paused Thursday to appreciate 50 years of advances, the people who made them, and th Read more...

Potential diabetes breakthrough

Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes, a metabolic illness afflicting an estimated 26 million Americans. The researchers believe that the hormone might also have a role in treating type 1, or juvenile, diabetes. The work was published today by the journal Cell as an early online release. It is scheduled for the May 9 print e Read more...

The cost of doing nothing

In recent years, the world has reduced preventable child deaths by 4 million a year. But 7 million children still die from preventable causes annually, and little progress has been made in the death rate of newborn babies and their mothers from the strains of childbirth. Experts speaking at The Forum at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) on Tuesday pinpointed childbirth as an area bypassed by recent efforts to improve health outcomes among ch Read more...

Big boost in drug discovery

Using a new, stem cell-based, drug-screening technology that could reinvent and greatly reduce the cost of developing pharmaceuticals, researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) have found a compound that is more effective in protecting the neurons killed in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) than are two drugs that failed in human clinical trials after large sums were invested in them. The new screening technique developed by Lee Rub Read more...

Widespread trauma

It was a cool Marathon Monday in Boston and the on-site medical tents were keeping up with the stream of running-related strains, sprains, and dehydration cases that the event normally brings. Across town, in Boston’s Longwood section, Stephanie Kayden, senior physician in charge of the emergency room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), a Harvard affiliate, and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), headed a team of about Read more...