Health

A decline in cancer mortality was a prominent feature of recent good news about U.S. life expectancy. The Gazette spoke with the director of the Chan School’s Zhu Family Center for Global Cancer Prevention to understand why.

Taxes on sugary drinks are potentially effective tools to fight the obesity epidemic and advocates are drawing lessons from the long battle against tobacco as they plot what they know will be a tough road ahead.

“The Game Changers” brought a panel of athletes and experts to tout the benefits of a plant-based diet to Harvard.

A Harvard Business School expert says effects will strengthen as manufacturers everywhere feel the pinch of slowing one of the world’s largest economies.

Harvard researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have developed a novel targeted drug that shows promise in advanced kidney cancer by interfering with the abnormal blood vessel formation that fuels tumor growth.

Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch said evidence indicates that the international cordon keeping coronavirus cases bottled up in China is a leaky one, and it’s likely that the relative handful of global cases reported so far are undercounted. If true, that will lead to widespread illness internationally, including in the U.S.

Bringing climate change into the examining room by discussing links between a warming environment and the everyday health of patients.

Treatment with a naturally occurring antioxidant, CoQ10, restores many aspects of fertility in C. elegans worms following exposure to BPA. The findings offer a possible path toward undoing BPA-induced reproductive harms in people.

Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina said as many as 100,000 people are likely already infected with the new coronavirus, with many more likely to come.

As the number of coronavirus cases rapidly grows, the Gazette spoke with Professor of Epidemiology Marc Lipsitch, an expert in the spread of infectious disease and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics.

Harvard researchers have devised what they hope is a better way to disinfect hands, using tiny aerosolized nanodroplets of water and nontoxic disinfectants that not only leave hands sterile, but use so little water the hands stay dry.

The lab that invented cryolipolisis or “Coolsculpting,” a popular nonsurgical method for reducing fat under the skin, is developing a promising new form of the technology that can selectively reduce fat almost anywhere in the body using an injectable ice solution or “slurry.”

A new study presents an alternative treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that has the potential to eliminate AML cells completely.

A Harvard study has found that people who practice healthy habits at age 50 lived more years free of chronic diseases compared to those who did not practice any of these habits.

New findings shed light as to how DEHP, a common chemical in plastic, may impact human reproductive health.

Researchers predict a marked rise in American adults with obesity or severe obesity in 10 years, leaving several states with obesity prevalence close to 60 percent.

Researchers have developed a software-based method of scanning electronic health records to estimate the risk that a healthy person will receive a dementia diagnosis in the future.

Natalie Dattilo discusses how the holiday season can trigger the blues — and how to help avoid them.

The first randomized controlled trial of the home hospital model in the U.S. reports improvements in health care outcomes while reducing costs by 38 percent.

A new study has found that between 2007 and 2017, children in eight low- and middle-income countries received, on average, 25 antibiotic prescriptions from birth through age 5 — up to five times higher than the already high levels observed in high-income settings.

A national analysis revealed an alarming decline in primary care use, which is associated with better health outcomes than episodic, inconsistent care. The decline was most pronounced among younger Americans and those without complex medical conditions.

A McLean psychologist has pioneered a program that aims to bring together two key emotional forces at work in patients’ lives: spirituality and counseling.

A study in mice shows the nervous system not only detects the presence of Salmonella in the gut but actively stops the organism from infecting the body by shutting the cellular gates that allow bacteria to invade the intestine and spread beyond it.

Accumulating evidence suggests that inflammatory processes may play a role in the initiation and progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Harvard researchers have found an orally administered liquid salt — choline and geranate — that can reduce the absorption of fats from food with no discernable side effects in rats, lowering total body weight by about 12 percent.

Young women’s use of diet pills, laxatives for weight control linked with later eating disorder diagnosis.

The National Academy of Medicine is mounting a Healthy Longevity Global Grand Challenge that seeks to boost innovation on healthier aging.

Harvard Chan School, Apple, and NIH have officially launched a groundbreaking study that has potential to become the largest-ever study of women’s health.

The landscape of the illegal drug trade changes constantly, particularly amid the current opioid crisis. Law-enforcement officers regularly find or confiscate pills, powders, and other substances and need to know…

Red meat recommendations and meat from plants: Chan School Nutrition Department head Frank Hu talks about recent developments in diet.