Damaris Christensen

All Stories by Damaris Christensen

  1. Health & Medicine

    Weight Matters, Even in the Womb

    Status at birth can foreshadow illnesses decades later.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Nitric oxide may benefit damaged hearts

    A small study in mice suggests that inhaling nitric oxide may protect against tissue damage after a heart attack.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Teasing out tea’s heart-healthy effect

    Drinking black tea makes a person's blood vessels dilate more easily, which may explain why drinking tea can protect against heart disease.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Big meals boost heart attack risk

    Unusually heavy meals boost a person's chance of developing a heart attack, at least among those people who already have risk factors for heart disease.

  5. Health & Medicine

    It’s that time. . .for heart attacks?

    A small study of young women already at high risk of having a heart attack suggests that heart attacks are most frequent when estrogen levels are low, soon after a woman's period begins.

  6. Health & Medicine

    New role for cholesterol-lowering drugs

    Drugs that lower cholesterol benefit patients who have just had a heart attack or chest pains, regardless of the patient's initial cholesterol levels.

  7. Health & Medicine

    Cancer cells on the move

    A new study suggests how a gene recently linked to liver, skin, and pancreatic cancer also causes an often-deadly form of breast cancer.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Boldly into the breech controversy

    Addressing a long-simmering controversy, a large new study has shown that in pregnancies where the baby has positioned itself to emerge feet or buttocks first, the delivery safest for the mother and child is a planned cesarean section rather than a vaginal birth.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Immune response in brain sparks nausea

    Ailments ranging from the common cold to many types of cancer can make people nauseous, an effect that may occur because signals from the brain suppress the muscle contractions required for digestion.

  10. Health & Medicine

    Cell therapy not just for Parkinson’s

    Transplanted nerve cells can survive in the brains of people who have suffered strokes and may alleviate some brain damage.

  11. Health & Medicine

    Making scents of Alzheimer’s

    Among people with mild symptoms of memory loss, a limited ability to recognize smells—along with an inability to detect the disability—has been linked to the future development of Alzheimer's.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Know Your Enemy

    Scientists mine the tuberculosis genome.