Medical Discoveries In 2019 There seems to be quite a few breakthroughs in medicine 2019. The first thing I want to talk about is prostate cancer. This is one of the most common cancers for men. I was talking to a doctor one day and he told me when they used to dissect male corpses in medical school almost all of them had some sign of prostate cancer. One can understand why men are so scared of this disease, because there are plenty of stories of men dying from painful prostate cancer deaths. One man who had all the treatments for this cancer was at a point in his life where there was no more hope because his cancer had metastasized. He contacted the doctor who gave him a chance to get into an experimental program. The trial program was testing an anti-antigen receptor inhibitor that stops the growth of cancer cells. It was being used with medical suppression drugs to treat his metastasized prostate cancer. The drug which was used cured the man and was a common drug which was already on the market so it seems the FDA will have no problem approving it for this treatment. There are just so many things which were discovered last year that are creating hope for people. One of the things most women seem to hate is getting a mammography. Depending on which doctor you go to it is usually recommended women forty years old or older get the test every year. It subjects the women to radiation and is not the most comfortable test. This may change in the future thanks to researchers in England who have developed a blood test which they believe will be able to detect cancer up to five years before a lump appears. They are at the point where they are going to increase the people in the study and do it again and it is hoped it will hold up. When we talk about cancer, there is a lot of folklore involved. There are so many stories where supposedly cancer was cured and the results were hidden. The end of the story always goes the same way in that it states huge drug companies were responsible for keeping the cure off the market so they can sell expensive pills which put people on a maintenance schedule instead of curing their illness. It is said this is done to increase profits and cancer patients will pay anything to stay alive. There was even a rumor which said the Germans in World War II cured cancer and the Americans found out when they confiscated the records from Germany after the war. Most people don’t believe any of this, but there was always the chance it could be true. There has been a lot of research into Alzheimer’s. This is one of the worst diseases a person could get, maybe not for the person themselves since they wouldn’t realize what they were doing, but for all those around them who have to watch their loved ones completely change and a lot of times get violent. Many people have said they would rather die than be an Alzheimer’s victim. I completely understand the sentiment. There is a new drug called Aducanumab which researchers feel could help Alzheimer’s patients. It seems the drug only halts the decline by an estimated 15% to 27% but something is better than nothing. We are at the point where a drug company is seeking FDA approval for this drug. It’s just a shame it can’t halt the progress of Alzheimer’s entirely. The amount of people in the United States who have Alzheimer's disease is a staggering 5,700,000. Scientists believe the cause of Alzheimer’s is a buildup of a protein called beta-amyloid in the brain. We all have it in our brains but in Alzheimer’s patients the proteins form plaques. The result is a reduced blood flow to the brain causing a breakdown of brain cells. A new drug called 3K3A-APC is being developed and is shown it can reduce these brain clogs by up to 90% in animals. The drug was developed to help people who have had strokes. For those reading this article who were in the military they may recognize the last three letters in the name of the drug which are APC. They brought back memories to me because when I was in the military and you got sick the Army would always give you a capsule called APC which meant you got a pill containing aspirin, phenacetin, and caffeine. For some reason the amount of people who have a peanut allergy has risen tremendously in this country. When I was young, I didn’t know anybody who had that allergy, but today I know several. This allergy may become a thing of the past because a study from Stanford University has shown if a person who has this allergy is injected with the antibody etokimab they are able to eat peanut protein in just two weeks later and this isn’t the only problem this antibody maybe good at curing. There are tests going on right now to see if it can be used to help with asthma and eczema. 2019 also saw advancements in gene editing. Gene editing is getting easier every year. One of the problems though, is unethical scientists doing gene experiments on babies at different stages of development before they are born. This is just too much of a temptation to some scientists in other countries and truthfully it could even be happening here secretly. There will come a time when hereditary diseases may be completely eliminated by editing genes in the womb. We might even find out we could eliminate not only inherited diseases but stop other diseases from forming. It turns out gene editing also works on plants and that is what has been used to try and make crops more resilient. Modified plants have caused a lot of consternation especially those plants which have both chemicals to kill pests and the part we eat all in one. A pharmaceutical company began clinical trials to treat sickle-cell disease by using gene editing. The idea was to replace the defective gene which cause these disorders. There is now a trial taking place in the United States, Canada and Europe. Great things have happened in 2019 in the medical field and probably even greater things will happen in 2020 because it seems the more we find out the quicker we reached the next plateau and find out even more. There may come a time in the near future where there will be no more disease.
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