Here are five medical breakthroughs from the past 12 months:
1. An 11-year-old boy who was born with a rare form of deafness caused by one gene mutation recently gained hearing from a gene therapy. Also, in a six-person clinical trial of children with a form of genetic deafness, five of the patients recovered their hearing. Both results were announced in January.
2. In March, surgeons at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital transplanted the world’s first genetically edited pig kidney into a living human. The recipient, Richard Slayman, was a 62-year-old man with end-stage kidney disease. He later died from an unexpected cardiac event, the hospital said, adding that the field of xenotransplantation is growing and could offer hope for thousands of patients.
3. Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Northwestern Medicine in Chicago have identified a potential cure for lupus. Patients with the autoimmune disease have an imbalance of T-cells, the researchers found and reported in a July Nature article.
Based on this new information, they said either activating the aryl hydrocarbon receptor pathway with small molecule activators or limiting “the pathologically excessive interferon in the blood” could diminish the disease-causing cells.
4. In September, the FDA approved the first schizophrenia treatment in more than 30 years.
The drug, Cobenfy, is an oral capsule manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb. The twice-daily pill helped study participants manage common symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions and disorganized thinking.
5. The FDA also approved the first combination COVID-19 and flu test. In October, the Healgen Rapid Check COVID-19/Flu A&B Antigen Test received the regulatory green light for over-the-counter use.
It can provide a result within 15 minutes for COVID-19 and influenza A and B. The test’s accuracy is 99% for negative COVID-19 samples, 92% of positive COVID-19 samples, 99.9% negative flu samples, and between 92.5% and 90.5% for positive samples of influenza A and influenza B, respectively.
