Benchmarks is your (almost) weekly dose of news and notes from the Mass General Research Institute community. With over 9,500 individuals working in research at Mass General, there’s more news than we can cover each week. Here are a few highlights:
- In the News
- 20 Years After the Start of the Iraq War, Researchers Continue to Work on Ways to Help Veterans with the Invisible Wounds of War
- Research into Rare Diseases Brings Hope to Families
- Using Technology to Predict and Prevent Suicide Attempts
- Tweets of the Week
- This Week in Mass General History
- Mass General Surgeons Save Girl with Mitral Valve Blockage
In the News
20 Years After the Start of the Iraq War, Researchers Continue to Work on Ways to Help Veterans with the Invisible Wounds of War
Ron Hirschberg, MD, Senior Director of Health and Wellness for the Home Base Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, was recently interviewed by the Harvard Gazette about the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War and its lasting impact.
“When the war stops and the coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan stops, the people who served there…those wounds are not like bones that break and heal in 12 weeks,” Hirschberg says. “They can resurface months to years later, and then it’s a matter of dampening the symptoms and providing the right care so that they can live their lives.”
Hirschberg discussed the efforts of researchers across the Mass General Brigham system to find biomarkers of post traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury and how they may impact treatment. The Home Base team is also exploring new treatment strategies using psychedelics and virtual reality.
“I have not served in the military and every day that I’m there, I’m reminder that our job is to take care of the folks who have raised their hand to take care of us.”
“The last thing anyone wants is to go to war, but when you have to, that’s what they’re there to do. The other end of the equation is simple: We take care of them when they’re back.” Read more.
Research into Rare Diseases Brings Hope to Families
Yi Gong, PhD, doesn’t see patients. But she thinks about them every day in the laboratory where she studies the molecular underpinnings of rare neurodegenerative diseases.
“I can only imagine the heartbreak these families feel when they watch their loved one struggle with progressive symptoms,” says the researcher in pediatric neurology. “I am inspired by their determination — and grateful for their partnership in our efforts to find answers.”
Working closely with Florian Eichler, MD, Director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Rare Neurological Diseases, Dr. Gong focuses on developing new treatments for adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), a serious and sometimes deadly hereditary genetic disease in children that damages nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, and adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN), a version of the disease that occurs in adults.
Using Technology to Predict and Prevent Suicide Attempts
Kate Bentley, PhD, a psychiatrist with the Depression Clinical and Research Program at Mass General, was invited to speak at Bowdoin College this week by the Bowdoin Department of Psychiatry.
Bentley discussed her ongoing research on identifying risk factors for suicide and using technology to predict and prevent suicide attempts.
Bentley explained that a major step in enhancing suicide prevention measures is identifying risk factors. However, even with the vast research conducted, little progress has been made toward using these factors to accurately predict and prevent suicide.
To address this discrepancy, Bentley’s lab used machine learning to build statistical models that use a patient’s electronic health records such as diagnoses, treatment history, demographic characteristics, age, sex and ethnicity to predict an individual’s risk for suicide. Read more.
Tweets of the Week
This Week in Mass General History
Mass General Surgeons Save Girl with Mitral Valve Blockage
April 2, 1949 — The World News of Sydney reports on a heart operation at Mass General that saved an 18-year-old girl with a potentially fatal heart defect:
A heart operation which saved a girl from drowning in her own blood has been quoted to the New England Heart Association as one of the most remarkable cases ever treated.
The patient was threatened with death through blood backing up into her lungs because the mitral valve of her heart was too narrow.
The heart functioned well enough ordinarily, but after an attack of rheumatic fever, the narrow opening caused a backup of blood flow into her lungs, threatening to drown her.
In an operation at the Massachusetts General Hospital, the doctors bypassed the damaged mitral valve, and joined up a segment of the-pulmonary vein in the lung and the azygos vein which runs into the right side of the heart. The girl has had no trouble since.
The operation has been successfully repeated on other patients at the hospital, the paper reports.
About the Mass General Research Institute
Research at Massachusetts General Hospital is interwoven through more than 30 different departments, centers and institutes. Our research includes fundamental, lab-based science; clinical trials to test new drugs, devices and diagnostic tools; and community and population-based research to improve health outcomes across populations and eliminate disparities in care.
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