Early research suggests the decades-old diabetes drug metformin can slow cancer, reduce heart disease and perhaps limit the ravages of Alzheimer’s. A new study shows it can extend lifespan in mice. Research by David Sinclair, HMS professor of genetics, and Kevin Struhl, the David Wesley Gaiser Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, is cited.
How do you tell your kids that their sports heroes are no longer heroes? Steven Schlozman, HMS assistant professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, provides advice on talking to children about athletes who take performance enhancing substances. Gene Beresin, HMS professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, also contributed to this piece.
The U.S. News and World Report has ranked the ten most expensive private medical schools in the country, with several Boston-area colleges making the list. HMS rankings are mentioned.
Atul Gawande, HMS professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, discusses his New Yorker article, “Slow Ideas: Some ideas spread fast. How do you speed the ones that don’t?”
Atul Gawande, HMS professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, explores why some innovations spread so swiftly and others so slowly in an upcoming issue of The New Yorker.
Keeping track of health measurements at home is pretty simple: Step onto a scale in the bathroom, take a glucose measurement on the way out the door, or strap on a blood pressure cuff while watching television. Now, doctors increasingly want access to those at-home measurements in an effort to keep patients healthier and reduce health care costs. John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and HMS professor of medicine, and Joseph Kvedar, HMS associate professor of dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital, are quoted.
Breast-feeding longer can make children smarter. That’s the conclusion of a study published Monday. Mandy Belfort, HMS assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, is the lead author of the study.
Despite guidelines to treat back pain conservatively, the proportion of people prescribed powerful painkillers or referred for surgery and other specialty care has increased in recent years, according to new research. Bruce Landon, HMS professor of health care policy, is a senior author of the study.
No hospital sends a stroke patient home without a detailed plan to help them regain as much of their normal functioning as possible. Yet cancer patients are routinely released with no guidance on how to deal with the impairments that may linger after their treatment is done. Julie Silver, HMS associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, is quoted.
Very little is more unnerving for a woman than to be called back for more tests after a mammogram. Fear — maybe even panic — sets in. A new technology may cut down on these recalls and the anxiety they cause. Daniel B. Kopans, HMS professor of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, is quoted.
