An epidemic: HIV+ woman in Khutsong, South Africa
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Heart
A powerful new clot-busting drug, tenecteplase, reduced treatment time for heart-attack victims from 90 minutes to just five seconds. Clinical trials showed the drug to be as effective as the standard clot buster t-PA and easier to use since it can be administered in one quick injection instead of an hour-and-a-half infusion. Tenecteplase, which was approved by the FDA last June, is also longer acting and specifically targets blood clots, rather than indiscriminately thinning the blood. Good news for the more than 1.1 million Americans each year who suffer a heart attack.
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Lung Cancer
Researchers were pleased to find that a diet rich in fruits and veggies reduced the risk — at least in women — of the No. 1 cancer killer in the U.S. Apples, pears, cauliflower and grapefruit were particularly active against the incidence of lung cancer for reasons are that are still unclear (although scientists suspect carotenoids may be powerful anticarcinogens). But the bottom line is that no quantity of cabbages or citrus fruits can outweigh the benefits of quitting smoking.
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MRI
A new form of noninvasive "black blood" magnetic-resonance-imaging technique allows doctors to detect problem spots in carotid arteries, the aorta and coronary arteries before patients develop symptoms of atherosclerosis or stroke. The high-resolution MRI blacks out blood flow, offering doctors a clear view of the blood vessels and allowing them to precisely measure the thickness of their walls. Though the black-blood technique still needs improvement, doctors hope the technology will eventually identify those at risk of heart attack long before they have one.
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Nerve Transplant
In a surgical first, Houston doctors transplanted nerves from a living donor to her infant son. To repair torn nerves in eight-month-old Rodrigo Cervantes Corona's left shoulder and arm, doctors took 3 ft. of neural tissue from his mother's legs and tracked it from the right side of his body to his left hand. The transplanted nerves act as a conduit to allow the baby's undamaged right-hand nerves to grow over to his left side. The mother will feel a bit of numbness on each side of her feet for the rest of her life.
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Parkinson's Disease
In an important step forward for both Parkinson's research and the struggling field of gene therapy, scientists in Chicago used a gene that boosts dopamine production and strengthens brain cells to successfully treat monkeys showing symptoms of the neurodegenerative disorder. By injecting a virus containing the GDNF (glial-derived neurotrophic factor) gene directly into monkeys' brains, scientists stimulated cell growth in areas normally injured by Parkinson's and reduced symptoms of the disease, such as hand tremors. Although success in primates doesn't mean success in humans, researchers hope to start clinical trials in humans within five years.
Polio
Last spring a strain of wild polio virus was unexpectedly discovered in the sewage system of Strasbourg, France. It's likely that the virus, considered extinct in that country, had instead escaped from one of Strasbourg's many biomedical laboratories. Still, the appearance of wild polio in a certified polio-free region undermined World Health Organization plans to eliminate universal vaccination once it declares polio eradicated, which it had hoped to do by 2005. Widespread on five continents, including the Americas, Europe and Asia, through the late 1980s, polio has now been contained mostly to parts of subSaharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent.
PPA
After decades of use as a decongestant and a weight-loss drug, a six-year study showed that the amphetamine-like stimulant phenyl-propanolamine (ppa) increases the risk of hemorrhagic stroke, especially in young women. The FDA subsequently deemed it unsafe and asked manufacturers to pull medications containing ppa off pharmacy shelves. ppa has been on the market since the mid-1930s, and consumers take 6 billion doses of it annually, in such products as Alka-Seltzer, Robitussin, Dexatrim and Tavist-D. Though ppa is widely used in many popular cold and diet pills, medications with the safer alternative pseudoephedrine are easy to find.
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Ritalin
For millions of children who suffer from with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd), drugs like Ritalin have been a godsend. Yet at the same time there is real concern that the use of Ritalin to curb all manner of fidgety behavior has become too casual and that the drug is actually being abused as a performance booster. A Duke University study suggested that the drug is, in fact, both over- and underprescribed. The Duke team found that 25% of kids with confirmable adhd are not getting the drug, while more than half of kids who are taking the drug should not.
RU-486
It was a long time coming, but finally, 12 years after its debut in France, RU-486 (mifepristone) was approved by the FDA, and the controversial "abortion pill" hit American shores. Did it change our world? Not yet. Abortion foes are campaigning against physicians who prescribe it, and even some doctors point out that an RU-486-induced abortion is expensive (the pills alone cost $240) and not as effective as the surgical procedure. Still, expect the drug to have a growing, if gradual, impact.