all body stories

Shore Fellows awarded valuable time

jake — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:33:21 -0400

N. Stuart Harris, an emergency physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, is also an active researcher doing groundbreaking research on hypoxia — a shortage of oxygen in the body.

Biohybrid of elastic film and muscle cells packs a punch

50443248 — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:04:05 -0400

In an innovative marriage of living cells and a synthetic substrate, bioengineers at Harvard University have found that a rubberlike, elastic film coated with a single layer of cardiac muscle cells can semi-autonomously engage in lifelike gripping, pumping, walking, and swimming. The tissue engineering feat was reported in the Sept. 7 issue of the journal Science.

The researchers, led by Kevin Kit Parker and Adam W. Feinberg, report that the exact movement undertaken by these hybrid muscular thin films (MTFs) can be tailored by controlling muscle alignment relative to the shape of the flexible film. Some of the MTFs even contract spontaneously, an intrinsic property of cardiac muscle that allows the devices to move around without user intervention.

Joslin-led study IDs genes key to regulation of body weight

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:48:26 -0400

A new Joslin Diabetes Center-led study has further illuminated the role of genes in regulating body weight and fat distribution. Because obesity is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes, identifying genes that affect this condition holds promise for the detection of individuals at risk, as well as for potential prevention and treatment methods. The study was presented on June 25 at the American Diabetes Association's (ADA) 67th Annual Scientific Sessions in Chicago.

Getting to obesity’s bottom line

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:43:20 -0400

Hunter-gatherer instincts set loose in a world of modern food abundance are at the root of today’s obesity crisis, according to a Harvard psychologist.

Deirdre Barrett, psychologist with the Harvard-affiliated Cambridge Health Alliance and assistant clinical professor of psychology in Harvard Medical School’s Psychiatry Department, says food manufacturers and advertising campaigns play to our Paleolithic instincts. They overemphasize the qualities of certain food items that appeal to the hunter-gatherer in us, creating “supernormal stimuli,” cues on an unnatural object that make it more desirable — and harder to resist — than the natural object it mimics.

Obesity protects against breast cancer

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:47:02 -0400

Being overweight or obese from adolescence to menopause reduces a woman's chances of getting breast cancer, researchers at Harvard Medical School have found. The earlier in life that the researchers looked, the stronger the association, leading to the conclusion that a woman's weight at age 18 is a strong predictor of breast cancer.

In this body size-breast cancer connection, risks are calculated by a height-to-weight comparison known as body mass index, or BMI. Men and women with a BMI lower than 25 are considered normal, as far as their weight is concerned. A BMI between 25 and 30 raises someone to overweight status. Higher than 30 earns an obese rating. Women with a BMI of 27.5 or higher have 43 percent less chance of getting breast cancer than those who fall between 20 and 22, according to the new study.

To compute your BMI, convert your weight to kilograms (1 pound equals 0.45 kilogram) and your height into meters (1 meter equals 3.3 feet), and then divide your weight by the square of your height (your height multiplied by itself). To give some idea of the actual sizes involved, a 5-foot, 7-inch woman with a BMI of 20 weighs 127 pounds. BMIs of 25, 27.5, and 30 or more raise weights to 159, 175, and 191-plus pounds.

This finding doesn't mean that it's OK for younger women to binge on french fries and chocolate. Other studies suggest that, for women, the risk of death from all causes increases for every pound of weight above the normal range. Obesity doubles to triples that risk.

Also, protection from breast cancer reverses after menopause. Then, overweight women have a much higher risk for breast cancer than thin women. 'Although a high birth weight is fairly consistently linked to an increase in premenopausal breast cancer, things seem to reverse around puberty,' notes Karin B. Michels, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology who led the study. 'We don't know exactly when the reverse occurs, but then it reverses again after menopause.'

Spring in your step helps avert disastrous stumbles

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:48:17 -0400

From graceful ballerinas to clumsy-looking birds, everyone occasionally loses their footing. New Harvard University research suggests that it could literally be the spring, or damper, in your step that helps you bounce back from a stumble.

Binge eating disorder may have genetic ties, McLean Hospital study finds

50443248 — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:58:56 -0400

Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital have reported that binge eating disorder runs in families, raising the possibility that this condition may have a genetic basis.

Professor shines light on shadowy condition

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:24:28 -0400

Sandra Fallman avoided mirrors. Walking down sidewalks during dates, she would avoid bright storefront lights, walking near the curb to stay in the shadows. She put 25-watt bulbs in her apartment lights, not to set the mood, but to provide cover. Fallman suffers from a little-known mental condition called body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). Sufferers are ashamed of certain aspects of their physical appearance because of exaggerated or imagined defects. But, unlike most of us who have flaws that we live with, these blemishes take over sufferers' lives, force them indoors, and cause them to shun contact with others.

"We don't just think we're ugly. We think we're grotesque and disfigured," said Fallman, a Marblehead resident who has been treated at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Body Dysmorphic Disorder Clinic.

The clinic, one of just a few in the United States, is run by Sabine Wilhelm, an associate professor of psychology in Harvard Medical School's Psychiatry Department and the clinic's founder and director.

The clinic provides drug therapy and a combination of cognitive and behavioral therapy that helps sufferers slowly remake their self-image and reform the behavior that goes with it.

Special delivery brings fats to immune system

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:41:03 -0400

It was both unexpected and unsurprising when, in the mid -1990s, Michael Brenner, the Theodore Bevier Bayles professor of medicine, and his colleagues showed that some antigen- presenting cells display fats rather than proteins. Arrayed on CD1, a new type of serving tray distinct from MHC molecules, fat-containing antigens derived from the tuberculosis bacterium ably turned on a specialized subset of lipid-reactive T cells.

The route that peptide antigens take to MHC is well understood, but far less was known about where and how lipid antigens come to bind to CD1. Now, Brenner and his colleagues report that fat antigens find their target via an unexpected messenger. In a paper published in the Oct. 6, 2005 Nature, the researchers show that the immune system uses apolipoproteins, best known for their role as cholesterol carriers, to deliver lipid antigens to CD1.

"This work brings together two previously unrelated systems - the apolipoprotein-mediated delivery of dietary fats and the delivery of lipid antigens to the immune system," Brenner said. This convergence has profound implications for understanding how the immune system patrols the body for lipid antigens, he added.

Male body image

50443248 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:32:19 -0400

Asian men show less dissatisfaction with their bodies than males in the United States and Europe, according to a Harvard study. This may explain why anabolic steroid abuse is much less prevalent in places like Taiwan than in the United States, Europe, and Australia, the researchers found.
"Disorders of body image, including a pathological preoccupation with muscularity, are growing increasingly common among Western males, notes Chi-Fu Jeffrey Yang, a Harvard senior. "By contrast, such male body-image problems appear to be rare in Asian societies."

Blue light special

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:31:40 -0400

Jet-setters and shift workers now sit in front of glaring white lights to readjust their body rhythms and avoid sleep and alertness problems. New experiments condcuted by Harvard University researchers suggest that they would be better off sitting in front of blue lights. The research also contradicts what many scientists believed for years, that the 24-hour biological clock is set by sight alone. Until 1995, dogma held that the intensity of light striking receptors that give humans color vision also adjust the daily cycle that controls sleep, performance, and other physical and behavioral factors. Now, there is conclusive evidence for a second system that dominates the setting of daily rhythms in creatures from bacteria to international travelers, even blind ones. "The visual system in humans is most sensitive to green light," notes Steven Lockley of Brigham and Women's Hospital, a Harvard research and teaching affiliate. "But when we exposed 12 healthy young men and women to the same amount of either green or blue light, their 24-hour rhythms shifted twice as much with blue than with green."

Leptin serves body as energy signal

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:21:00 -0400

Much leptin research in humans has focused on feasting rather than famine, but Christos Mantzoros's team, led by Jean Chan, a Harvard Medical School clinical fellow in medicine, took a different approach.

Mantzoros, lead author and HMS assistant professor of medicine at BIDMC, and his group studied eight healthy men to see how the changes in leptin induced by fasting regulated other neuroendocrine signals in normal humans.

Minimally invasive treatment successfully destroys kidney tumors

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:28:54 -0400

A research team from Massachusetts General Hospital has described how a technique called radiofrequency ablation (RFA) destroyed all renal cell carcinoma (RCC) tumors less than 3 cm in size and some larger tumors, depending on their location. The most common form of kidney cancer, RCC will be diagnosed in almost 32,000 Americans this year and is most frequently treated with surgical removal through either an open or laparoscopic procedure. "We're very pleased with the success we've had, particularly treating small tumors and those on the outside of the kidney," says Debra Gervais, of the Abdominal Imaging and Interventional Radiology Service in the MGH Department of Radiology, first author of a paper in the February 2003 issue of Radiology. "We now have an another year of experience beyond what is reported in this paper -- more than 30 additional patients -- with similar results." RFA delivers heat generated by electrical energy to tumor sites through a thin needle, similar to probes used in biopsy procedures. Placement of the probe is guided by CT scan, ultrasound or other imaging techniques. Widely used to treat cardiac arrhythmias, RFA is also being investigated for destruction of small liver tumors.

Scientists identify hundreds of worm genes that regulate fat storage

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:28:29 -0400

Findings by Harvard researchers, published in the Jan. 16, 2003 issue of Nature, represent the first survey of an entire genome for all genes that regulate fat storage. The research team led by Gary Ruvkun, of the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Molecular Biology, and postdoctoral fellow Kaveh Ashrafi identified about 400 genes encompassing a wide range of biochemical activities that control fat storage. These studies were conducted using the tiny roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, an organism that shares many genes with humans and has helped researchers gain insights into diseases as diverse as cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease. Many of the fat regulatory genes identified in this study have counterparts in humans and other mammals. "This study is a major step in pinpointing fat regulators in the human genome," says Ruvkun, who is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. "Of the estimated 30,000 human genes, our study highlights about 100 genes as likely to play key roles in regulation of fat levels."

Replacing joints early may be better than waiting for some osteoarthritis sufferers

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:28:36 -0400

In a study, scientists from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Toronto Western Hospital followed the progress of patients who opted to have joint replacement surgery. They found that those patients who had postponed having the surgery the longest -- and therefore were experiencing the most pain and loss of joint function -- also experienced the worst results two years after joint replacement surgery. "Many patients and doctors have traditionally regarded this kind of surgery as a last-resort sort of procedure," said the study's senior author, Jeffrey Katz of BWH. "But we found that patients could have a positive impact on their quality of life by being proactive about the real benefits associated with having this surgery before their conditions completely degenerate." In the study, 222 patients were divided into two groups: those with higher joint function and less pain, and those with more pain, and less joint function. Researchers noticed very little difference between how people felt after six months, compared to how they felt after two years. However, the patients who went into surgery feeling the worst, also felt worse than the healthier group two years after having their hips or knees replaced.