all Joseph David Brain stories

Noninfectious pathway for HIV found by HSPH team

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:39:28 -0400

HIV is a crafty virus. It attacks the body by invading and taking over the very cells meant to protect humans from infection. Hiding within cells such as macrophages and lymphocytes, the virus uses the body's natural machinery to replicate itself, destroying the immune system and leaving patients open to a range of debilitating and deadly opportunistic infections.

Now, a team led by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers has described a previously unappreciated pathway used by HIV to enter macrophages and has shown that the virus, once in the cells through this entryway, doesn't appear to replicate. Rather than causing infection, the virus is destroyed, and an immune response may be triggered.

Industrial disasters sparked field of environmental health

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:10:22 -0400

Two large, unnatural disasters helped to create the impetus for the field of environmental health to grow in scope. But before there was a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and before the National Institutes of Health (NIH) included environmental health, there was the Kresge Center for Environmental Health at Harvard's School of Public Health. Beginning in 1958, the center brought together medical and physical scientists and engineers to investigate the manmade health problems of the 20th century. From a classic focus on industrial workplaces, the Kresge Center has seen environmental health grow to incorporate every part of our natural and constructed habitats.