Life after Insulin

For decades, patients with type I diabetes have been assured that a cure would be just around the corner, but such promises have always led to disappointment.

A unique clinical research project underway at Mass General might finally change all that — reversing, even preventing, the autoimmune disorder and weaning type 1 sufferers off insulin for good.

Getting Back to Normal

The prognosis for patients with diabetes has steadily improved in recent decades, thanks to technological advances like self-monitoring meters, new insulins and increasingly smaller, portable insulin pumps. But when Edmoth Matthews of Sterling, Mass. was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as a child, he was advised by medical experts to set aside any expectations to live a normal, active life.

Unforgettable Breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s

Back in the 1980s, it was becoming evident that Alzheimer’s disease was an imposing challenge whose weight on health and society was just beginning to be felt. As people began to live longer and the U.S. population began to age, more and more people were finding themselves on the receiving end of a diagnosis of this slow but deadly neurodegenerative disease. By the time President Ronald Reagan wrote a letter to his “fellow Americans” in November 1994 announcing his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, the disease was already a household name — and the scientific community, keen on finding a cure, had just begun to congeal.

When the Drugs Stop Working

Some patients respond to PLX4032, then develop resistance to it. What are Mass General scientists doing to reverse that phenomenon?

With Surgical Precision, a Self-Diagnosis

Three years ago, at age 56, Tony Morgan, MD, looked at a scan of his own brain. An acclaimed trauma surgeon and chief of Surgery at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, Conn., Dr. Morgan knew exactly what he was looking at when he saw the image before him. He diagnosed himself with Alzheimer’s.