Some women 50 and older may be able to have a mammogram every other year without increasing their risk of developing an advanced breast cancer, according to a large new study on nearly 1 million women. Daniel Kopans, HMS professor of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, is quoted.
Corporate e-mail traffic can now be analyzed to determine how companies can help influence obese employees to adopt more healthful habits, according to a new study from Activate Networks of Newton and Healthways, a Tennessee company that helps businesses to devise and implement wellness programs. Nicholas Christakis, HMS professor of health care policy, is quoted.
In a powerful demonstration of reprogramming’s potential to treat human disease and injury, scientists at University of Wisconsin-Madison turned skin cells into early brain cells, then implanted them successfully into a primate. Ole Isacson, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study, is quoted.
Breast-feeding is widely encouraged for its many positive health effects, but the claim that it reduces the risk for childhood obesity may be going too far. A randomized trial has found that even long-term exclusive breast feeding has no effect on obesity or stature in childhood. Emily Oken, HMS associate professor of population medicine, is the senior author.
Leana Wen, HMS clinical fellow in medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, authored this piece about her perspective on the Chinese health care system.
The Supreme Judicial Court today ruled against a Canton company that makes padded hip protectors, saying a Harvard Medical School researcher did not libel it in a medical-journal article that said the devices did not seem to do much to protect the elderly from broken hips.
Most of the nearly 300,000 American women diagnosed with breast cancer each year receive radiation to help prevent a relapse, yet a new study suggests that those treatments increase the risk of heart attacks and of dying from heart disease up to 20 years later. Javid Moslehi, HMS instructor in medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, wrote an editorial accompanying the study. Mehra Golshan, HMS associate professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is also quoted.
