Latest Women's Hospital Stories

Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) are the first to discover that changes in monocytes (a type of white blood cell) are a biomarker for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease. This finding also brings the medical community a step closer toward a new treatment for the debilitating neurological disease that affects approximately 30,000 Americans. The study will be published online in The Journal of Clinical Investigation on August 6, 2012. In...

Findings may affect how doctors treat allergic inflammation and organ transplant rejection A research team led by Xian Chang Li, MD, PhD, Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) Transplantation Research Center, has shed light on how a population of lymphocytes, called CD4+ T cells, mature into various subsets of adult T helper cells. In particular, the team uncovered that a particular cell surface molecule, known as OX40, is a powerful inducer of new T helper cells that make copious amounts of...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Bad news for anyone not getting the recommended eight hours worth of sleep every night: Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston have found that the longer a person stays awake, the more trouble he or she will have performing certain types of tasks. As part of the study, which was published in Thursday's online edition of the Journal of Vision, researchers from the hospital collected and analyzed data from...

2 Brigham and Women's Hospital patients have no detectable traces of HIV following transplantation Two men with longstanding HIV infections no longer have detectable HIV in their blood cells following bone marrow transplants. The virus was easily detected in blood lymphocytes of both men prior to their transplants but became undetectable by eight months post-transplant. The men, who were treated at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), have remained on anti-retroviral therapy. Their cases...

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Omnicell, Inc. (NASDAQ:OMCL), a leading provider of medication and supply management solutions and analytics software for healthcare facilities, today announced that the University of South Alabama Health System (USA), based in Mobile, Ala., selected Omnicell to be its provider of automated medication management solutions throughout USA Medical Center and USA Children's & Women's Hospital. The University of South Alabama...

Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) are the first to report a new approach that integrates rational drug design with supramolecular nanochemistry in cancer treatment. Supramolecular chemistry is the development of complex chemical systems using molecular building blocks. The researchers utilized such methods to create nanoparticles that significantly enhanced antitumor activity with decreased toxicity in breast and ovarian cancer models. "This work is effectively moving...

Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have made a groundbreaking discovery that will shape the future of melanoma therapy. The team, led by Thomas S. Kupper, MD, chair of the BWH Department of Dermatology, and Rahul Purwar, PhD, found that high expression of a cell-signaling molecule, known as interleukin-9, in immune cells inhibits melanoma growth. Their findings will be published online in the July 8, 2012 issue of Nature Medicine. After observing mice without genes...

Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have discovered a new vaccine candidate for the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa taking advantage of a new mechanism of immunity. The study was published online in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine on June 21, 2012. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a leading cause of hospital-acquired infections, particularly in patients on respirators, where it can cause so-called ventilator-associated pneumonia, which carries a...

Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is the second most common cause of childhood blindness in the United States, occurring in half of premature infants born earlier than or at 28 weeks gestational age. The condition is caused by abnormal blood vessel development in the retina of the eye. ROP risk increases with decreasing gestational age. A study by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) suggests that the antioxidant, rhSOD (recombinant human Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase), reduces...

Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital uncover a population of cells that are targeted by the cancer-causing human papillomaviruses Virtually all cervical cancers are caused by HPV infections, with just two HPV types, 16 and 18, responsible for about 70 percent of all cases, according to the National Cancer Institute. Scientists have presumed for decades that the cervical cancers that develop from HPV infection arise in a specific location in the cervix. Now, new research from...