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OSTEOPOROSIS Bone may look hard and static, but it's very much alive: new bone cells are constantly being made and old bone cells destroyed. With age, however, less bone gets made than destroyed. Result: 10 million Americans have dangerously low bone mass, or osteoporosis. This process can be reversed, however, and in November the FDA approved Forteo, the first treatment that does that. The drug contains part of the human parathyroid hormone, which builds up bone by boosting bone-making cells and suppressing bone destroyers. Studies show that postmenopausal women taking Forteo along with calcium and vitamin-D supplements significantly reduced their risk of fractures. Unfortunately, Forteo comes only in injectable form, which means daily shots in the thigh or abdomen.
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PROSTATE CANCER Watchful waiting has become a byword for prostate-cancer patients, most of whom won't need aggressive surgery to remove their slow-growing tumors. But doctors have long felt uneasy about the tightrope they walked, trying to find the right balance between advising surgery for those men most likely to survive the cancer and counseling those with the slowest-growing tumors to watch and wait. Fresh guidance came last year from a large Scandinavian study, in which men randomly assigned to undergo surgery reduced by 50% their risk of dying from prostate cancer or having their cancer spread. It's not clear, however, how this applies to American men. In the Scandinavian group, most patients were found to have relatively advanced tumors, big enough to be felt in a doctor's manual exam. By contrast, in the U.S., 75% of men's tumors are discovered by a blood test, which picks up cancers long before they become noticeable.
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SMALLPOX The rise of terrorism and the anthrax attacks of 2001 have led to concern that this historic scourge, banished from the U.S. in 1949, could be reintroduced into the population. That's why the U.S. government has begun vaccinating military and health-care personnel and ordered up enough vaccine to inoculate the entire U.S. population if necessary. It's the first smallpox-vaccination program since routine shots were discontinued in the U.S. in 1972. Should you get a smallpox shot when it becomes widely available next year, assuming the threat is still merely theoretical? Things to consider before you line up for a shot: many of the college students who volunteered to test the new vaccine experienced fevers, chills and muscle aches severe enough to keep them from classes for a day. Those with weakened immune systems, such as AIDS patients and cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, as well as people with a history of eczema or other skin conditions probably shouldn't get vaccinated under any circumstances.