Steven Schlozman, assistant professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Gene Beresin, professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, ccoauthored this blog post as a collaborative effort between the Clay Center For Young Healthy Minds affiliated with Harvard Medical School, and Alexia Norton Jones, the daughter of Martin Luther King’s speechwriter and friend.
Kids who were raised in a Romanian institution for abandoned children have smaller heads, smaller brains, and different white matter structure than similar kids who were moved into high-quality foster care at an early age, according to a new study. Even those who were moved into foster care by age two have noticeably different brains from children raised in biological families. Charles Nelson, professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, is the senior author of the study.
Marijuana use should be decriminalized and federal officials should reclassify cannabis as a less dangerous drug to spur vital medical research, the leading group of U.S. pediatricians recommended Monday. In an update to its 2004 policy statement on pot, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) also recognized marijuana may be a treatment option for kids “with life-limiting or severely debilitating conditions for whom current therapies are inadequate.” Sharon Levy, chair of AAP’s committee on substance abuse and assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, is one of the statement’s coauthors.
Many breast cancer patients don’t understand the details of their disease, according to a new study. While many believed they understood the grade, stage and type of tumor, 20 percent to 58 percent identified those characteristics correctly. Rachel Freedman, assistant professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, is the study’s author.
A December US Census Bureau report found that 39 percent of people over age 65 battle at least one disability, and the most common hurdle they face is serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs. The ranks of older, disabled adults could swell rapidly, the report cautioned, as the number of aging baby boomers increases. Such disabilities mean more Americans losing independence and relying on costly, long-term health services. Which is why researchers in Boston and across the country are redoubling efforts to pinpoint the elders most likely to become disabled, and crafting simple exercise programs to stem the downward slide. Jonathan Bean, associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, is leading research on the subject.
Teams at Yale and at Harvard Medical School worked with bacterium famous for food poisoning has its genetics altered to produce fuel or pharmaceuticals—and to keep it from escaping the lab. George Church, Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics, is senior author on one of research papers.
Rushika Fernandopulle, clinical instructor in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Ateev Mehrotra, associate professor of health care policy, participated in an interview about improving primary care delivery.
Janice Walker, assistant professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, plans to develop and test “OurNotes,” an interface that will invite patients to contribute to their own medical notes.
Michael J. Davidson, HMS assistant professor of surgery, is remembered as a visionary cardiac surgeon, loving husband and father by colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
President Barack Obama made few references to health care during his State of the Union address, but one topic in the spotlight was what he referred to as “precision medicine,” a way of approaching diseases in a highly individualized way by using patient DNA to predict how one might respond to specific treatments. Scott Weiss, professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is quoted.
