October 1, 2001 - Drs. Dennis Kasper and Elliott Kieff were among the 60 new members elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. They join Dr. Frank Speizer who was elected as a member of the Institute in 2000.

June 8, 2001 - Today's Harvard Focus reports that the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation presented Dr. Frank Speizer and Dr. Walter Willett with the Charles S. Mott Prize. The presigious prize honors the most outstanding contribution to the discovery of the cause or ultimate prevention of cancer. Drs. Speizer and Willett were recognized for creating and sustaining the Nurses' Health Study as well as for two companion studies, the data from which have generated some of the most important epidemiologic findings in the fields of cancer and overall public health.

June 1, 2001 - The Nurses' Health Study celebrates a quarter-century of some of the most inportant findings in women's health. Funded through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the NHS has provided findings associated with breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, horomone replacement therapy, stroke, diabetes, osteoporosis, and several forms of cancer.

Originally the study comprised married, female registered nurses (RNs), ages 30 to 55, residing in the 11 states with the largest number of RNs -- New York, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Michigan, Texas, Florida, Connecticut and Maryland. Participants were mailed an initial health-realted questionnaire related to lifestyle patterns. Since 1976, similar questionnaires have been mailed to participants every other year, with an exceptionally high response rate of more than 90 percent. In 1989, Nurses' Health Study II began with younger women, ages 25 to 42, to aid researchers in detecting more long-term effects of various factors in women of childbearing age.

Dr. Frank Speizer, Principal Investigator of the NHS, suggested that nurses were chosen because he thought they would be interested as health care providers, and that they would be able to more accurately and with greater completeness report medical events. Dr. Speizer and his co-investigators Dr. Susan Hankinson, Dr. Graham Colditz, and Dr. JoAnn Manson have summarized their research in the soon-to-be released Healthy Women, Healthy Lives which highlights a 25 years of findings to better the health of today's women and those of future generations.

Key findings from the Nurses' Health Study include:

• Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) reduces the risk of osteoporosis, a disease in which bones become porous and prone to fracture. HRT may also lower the risk of heart disease and colon cancer. It may, however, increase the risk of breast cancer, gallbladder disease and blood clots in the lungs.
• Women who drink moderate amounts of alcohol have a 30 percent higher risk of breast cancer than non-drinkers. Those who consume two or more alchoholic drinks per day, whether it be beer, wine or alcohol, are at even greater risk.
• Regular exercise, including brisk walking, protects against heart disease, stroke, diabetes and colon cancer. In helping to keep weight down, it also cuts the risk of many other diseases.
• Obese women are about three times more likely to develop heart disease, twice as likely to have a stroke, and 50 percent more likely to develop colon cancer than lean women. Being overweight also increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, endometrial cancer, gallstones, kidney stones and asthma. Losing a modest amount of weight confers significant health benefits, as does maintaining a steady weight throughout adulthood.
• Women taking birth control pills for at least five years are half as likely to develop ovarian and endometrial cancers as those who've never taken them -- and the protective effect lasts for at least a decade. However, women taking oral contraceptives have a slightly higher risk of breast cancer than those who don't.
• Eating lots of fruits and vegetables, especially citrus fruits and green leafy vegetables, helps protect against heart disease, stroke and some cancers. Nuts, once shunned as fattening, may trim the risk of clogged arteries and heart disease.

January 16, 2001 - In a study published in today's Annals of Internal Medicine, Dr. Frank Hu and other Nurses' Health Study researchers found that regular exercise could reduce the risk of heart attacks in diabetic women. While moderate to vigorours exercise has been proven to benefit health in the general population, this is the first study to target diabetic women, who are at high risk for heart attack and stroke. Four hours of exercise per week, including walking, can reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke by 40 percent.

January 4, 2001 - Dr. Frank Sacks published a report in today's New England Journal of Medicine finding that low salt intake benefits people with and without hypertension.

January 1, 2001 - This month's issue of Pediatrics features a report by Dr. Alison Field finding that parents and media, not peers, influence weight concerns in adolesence.