New drugs are making a dent against some hard-to-treat cancers, but some results raise fresh questions about whether the benefit is worth the cost. Joyce Liu, instructor in medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, led a study on treating ovarian cancer.
To level the playing field, some believe patients should be able to see what their doctor is writing about them. But note-sharing with mental health patients has been slower to develop. The leaders of OpenNotes Tom Delbanco, the Richard A. and Florence Koplow-James L. Tullis Professor of General Medicine and Primary Care, and Jan Walker, assistant professor of medicine, both of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, are quoted.
Adult day health centers – informally called adult day care – have been around for more than 30 years. But demand for them has risen, driven by a growing population of older adults and a desire for people to live with family members, not in institutions. Hebrew Rehabilitation Center is featured.
Speaking two or more languages helps protect your brain as you age, even if you learn new languages as an adult, new research suggests. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, wrote an accompanying commentary.
Clinicians and others trying to improve end-of-life communication between doctors and their patient have turned for help to a set of videos. Developed by two Harvard doctors, the videos aim to better inform patients about their medical options while easing the way for frank discussions with health-care providers. Angelo Volandes, assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, co-founded the nonprofit foundation in 2010 that makes and distributes the videos.
It’s no secret that your friends influence your taste in music and clothes, but a growing body of research suggests that their words and actions might hold sway over your weight as well. Thinfluence, a new book co-authored by Walter Willett, chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, and Malissa Wood, assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, is featured.
Once strongly aligned with the GOP, American physicians are leaning more left, an analysis of campaign contributions over two decades shows. Arnold Relman, professor of medicine, emeritus, is the author of a journal editorial.
Geneticist George Church tinkers with DNA to fight disease, create new biofuels, and perhaps even resurrect extinct species. Church is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at HMS.
A cheap, decades-old chemotherapy drug extended life by more than a year when added to standard hormone therapy for men whose prostate cancer has widely spread, doctors reported. Christopher Sweeney, associate professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, led the study.
With new cancer drugs priced as high as $10,000 a month and more, and insurers tightening payment rules, patients who thought they were well covered increasingly find themselves having to make life-altering decisions about what they can afford. An HMS study is cited in the article.
A former post-doctoral researcher at HMS intentionally falsified data, figures, and a “legend” used to interpret the figures in a paper submitted to the journal Nature, according to the federal Office of Research Integrity.
