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WOMEN'S HEALTH Research Brought to Bear on Women's HealthThe Women's Health Research Conference, sponsored by the Center of Excellence in Women's Health at HMS, featured presentations on some of the clinical topics of most concern to women, emphasizing new findings on treatment and complications that recent research has brought to light. The Oct. 25 conference also featured a poster session displaying research by the winners of HMS's Fund for Women's Health 2000 Awards. Recipients of the 2001 awards were announced in November (see sidebar below).
Lynne Stevenson argued that research on heart failure should focus on finding treatments, not sex differences. Photo by Steve Gilbert Graham Colditz, HMS professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, weighed the pros and cons of hormone replacement therapy in light of its relationship to breast cancer. He described how the past two decades of the Nurses' Health Study have presented a picture of breast cancer risk that is "more complicated than we originally thought." A woman's risk varies according to age of menopause onset, body mass, duration of therapy, and hormone regimen--estrogen alone or combination therapy. Despite continuing uncertainties, "the weight of evidence clearly points to hormones as a cause of breast cancer," Colditz said, and long-term use of them needs to be reexamined. Complexities uncovered by basic research also have changed our understanding of diabetes, said Barbara Khan, HMS professor of medicine at BID. Khan described her research into the role of fat in diabetes, an increasing health problem among women. Even though muscle is the tissue most responsible for insulin uptake, Khan's research in mouse models has shown that insulin resistance in fat has a greater effect on insulin tolerance in the whole body. "Fat plays a key role [in diabetes], and now we think that fat is an endocrine organ," she said, overturning the classic view of fat cells as mere silos of stored energy. Lynne Stevenson, HMS associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, tackled the issue of differences between women and men in the incidence, diagnosis, and treatment of heart failure. After reviewing several comparative studies, she argued that although therapies should be tested on a wide variety of people, research should focus on finding the best therapy for everyone rather than quibbling over differences among groups. In addition, a panel discussion, moderated by Eleanor Shore, HMS dean for faculty affairs, addressed the role of mentoring in advancing research and career development. The panelists gave advice to young researchers and offered suggestions for choosing a mentor. --Courtney Humphries
Center of Excellence in Women's Health Announces GrantsIn its third year of funding collaborative, interinstitutional research and programs concerning women's health, the HMS Center of Excellence in Women's Health announced the winners of the 2001 HMS Fund for Women's Health Awards. Four of the year's 13 awards, which are each worth up to $45,000, are led by underrepresented minority faculty or investigate a specific issue related to underserved or minority women patient populations. The recipients are Maureen Connelly (HMS), Susan Parsons (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute), Mary Loeken, (Joslin Diabetes Center), S. Jean Emans (Children's Hospital), Nancy Tarbell (Massachusetts General Hospital), and JoAnn Manson and Carol Nadelson (both from Brigham and Women's Hospital) for "The Effect of Gender and Family Responsibilities on Career Advancement and Satisfaction: Identifying Obstacles to Advancement and Strategies for Success"; Hilde-Kari Guttormsen (BWH) and Lisa Cavacini (BID) for "Epitope Mapping of Antibodies Elicited by Capsular Polysaccharides of Group Streptococcus"; Janet Rich-Edwards (HMS), Janet Hall, and Marcia Ellison (both of MGH) for "The Multiple Births Outcome Study"; Catherine Hayes (HSDM), Leslie Halpern, and Thomas Dodson (both from MGH) for "Head, Neck, and Facial Injuries as Markers for Intimate Partner Violence"; Lisa Hirschhorn (BID), Bruce Landon, and Paul Cleary (both from HMS) for "The Role of Organizational, Clinic, and Provider Characteristics in Quality of Care for Women with HIV/AIDS"; Carolyn Lamb (Mount Auburn Hospital), Sughra Raza (BWH), Marsha Moses (CH), Rochelle Scheib (DFCI), Susan Pories, and Margaret Lotz (both from BID) for "Matrix Metalloproteinases in Women with Breast Cancer: Urinary Excretion and Signaling Pathways"; Elizabeth Miller (MGH), Anne Becker (HMS), Karen Lasser, and Richard Hermann (both from Cambridge Hospital) for "Is Mental Illness a Barrier to the Early Detection of Breast Cancer?"; Deborah Price (BWH) and Lori Laffel (JDC) for "Risk of Diabetic Nephropathy in African American Females"; Cynthia McDermott (HMS), Peter Ratiu, and Lennox Hoyte (both from BWH) for "Biomechanical and Computer-aided Models of the Healthy and Incontinent Pelvic Floor"; Andrea Richardson (BWH), Matthew Meyerson, Lyndsay Harris, and Robert Gentleman (all from DFCI) for "Analysis of Breast Carcinomas Using Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Microarrays"; Amy Sullivan, Laurie Rosenblatt, and Susan Block (all from DFCI) and Antoinette Peters and Sharon Steinberg (both from HMS) for "Caring for Women at the End of Life: The Nature and Effects of Caregiving Relationships for Older Women with Late Stage Cancer" (second year); Kimberly Pearson (McLean Hospital), Debra Franko (BID), Katie Weinger, Ann Goebel-Fabbri, and Barbara Anderson (all from JDC) for "Weight, Insulin Omission, and Eating Issues in Women with Diabetes"; and Joel Lawitts (BID), Diane Wright, Mehmet Toner, and Thomas Toth (all from MGH) for "Trehalose as a Novel Cryoprotectant for Long-Term Preservation of Human Oocytes." |
