Mass General Brigham • 30th May 2025

Modeling Study Predicts National Fluoride Ban Would Substantially Increase Children’s Tooth Decay and Dental Costs

Fluoride has been added to public water systems in the United States since 1945 to strengthen tooth enamel and fight off bacteria, ultimately reducing tooth decay. Researchers developed a model to estimate dental health outcomes for children if the United States were to ban fluoridation of public water. The new study, published in JAMA Health Forum, found that banning fluoride would substantially increase dental decay and costs particularly for publicly insured children.

Mass General Brigham • 22nd May 2025

Timely Initiation of Statin Therapy for Diabetes Shown to Dramatically Reduce Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke

Mass General Brigham observational study of over 7,000 patients with diabetes showed those who started statin therapy immediately cut the risk of a cardiovascular event by a third compared to those who opted to delay statin treatment

Mass General Brigham • 22nd May 2025

Researchers Develop Gene Therapy That Can Target Airway and Lungs via Nasal Spray

For gene therapy to work well, therapeutic molecules need to be efficiently delivered to the correct locations in the body—a job commonly given to adeno-associated viruses (AAV).

Mass General Brigham • 14th May 2025

Researchers Identify Measure of Pulse Rate That Can Predict Faster Cognitive Decline in Older Adults

Mass General Brigham study suggests the new measure is more sensitive than conventional ones.
Healthy hearts are adaptable, and heartbeats exhibit complex variation as they adjust to tiny changes in the body and environment.

Mass General Brigham • 14th May 2025

Q&A: ‘Cell Line Atlas’ Provides a Crucial Resource for Developing Therapies for Biliary Tract Cancer

Nabeel El-Bardeesy, PhD, the John R. Gallagher III and Katherine A. Gallagher Endowed Chair in Gastrointestinal Cancer Research at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate member at the Broad Institute, is a co-senior author of a paper published in Cancer Discovery.

Mass General Brigham • 14th May 2025

Persistent Mucus Plugs Linked to Faster Decline in Lung Function for Patients with COPD

Senior author Alejandro Diaz, MD, MPH, of the BWH Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, and team previously published a paper linking mucus plugs to increased mortality in patients with COPD, even for those who were not experiencing the hallmark symptoms like cough and phlegm production. The researchers next wanted to figure out how the persistence or resolution of mucus plugs influence the progression of the disease. 
They examined data from 2,118 participants in the NIH-funded COP...

Mass General Brigham • 1st May 2025

Researchers Find That Increase of ‘CLU’ Protein Promotes Brain Resilience and Could Provide Protection from Alzheimer’s Disease

Recently approved Alzheimer’s drugs offer a step forward for treating the disease, but new therapeutic strategies are needed to complement them and provide personalized therapeutic approaches. Mass General Brigham researchers have identified a potential strategy to protect against Alzheimer’s disease by increasing the clusterin protein (CLU).

Bench Press • 30th April 2025

How the Nurses’ Health Study Transformed What We Know About Public Health

The half-century-long, multigenerational study of over 280,000 nurses has helped shape our understanding of how lifestyle factors affect health and disease—and it’s still going strong today.

Mass General Brigham • 24th April 2025

Q&A: IV Magnesium Reduces Kidney Damage from Cisplatin Chemotherapy

Shruti Gupta, MD, MPH, and David Leaf, MD, MMSc, of the Renal Division, Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital are the first and senior authors, respectively, of a paper published in JAMA Oncology, “Intravenous Magnesium and Cisplatin-Associated Acute Kidney Injury: A Multicenter Cohort Study.”

Alvin Gogineni, Genentech

Broad Institute • 9th April 2025

Potential Alzheimer’s Disease Therapeutic Target Identified in Brain Immune Cells

Tim-3 is an immune checkpoint molecule involved in immunity and inflammation recently linked to late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but its role in the brain was unknown until now. In a paper published in Nature, researchers from Mass General Brigham used preclinical models to uncover Tim-3’s role in microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, and have identified it as a promising therapeutic target for Alzheimer’s disease.