The biggest medical milestones of 2022

Science is often a piecemeal process, slowly progressing through the incremental accumulation of knowledge. In the world of medical science, this is particularly evident, as small, specific research findings one year may, or may not, lead to massive, life-changing new therapies decades later.

It’s often hard to see the forest from the trees, but if we zoom out a bit and look back over the past 12 months, it quickly becomes clear that there have been some incredible advances in the world of medical science. Some are academic (finally mapping the entire human genome), and others are the accumulation of years of work (mRNA cancer vaccines reach advanced stages of human testing), but all of these stories are historic moments that will shape the future. Of medicine.

The great story of the pandemic: the convergent evolution of Omicron

For many people, the third year of the pandemic marked a return to some kind of normalcy after a big wave of Omicron in early 2022. But sadly, we don’t decide when the pandemic ends, that depends on the virus. And the last 12 months have still seen incredibly high hospitalization and mortality rates as SARS-CoV-2 continues to reinfect hundreds of millions of people for the second, third, or fourth time.

Perhaps the biggest pandemic story of 2022 was the way SARS-CoV-2 splintered into dozens of different subvariants, all converging on similar mutations. The story of how we noticed this happening and what it means for the future of the pandemic is a strange story that began when a group of researchers on Twitter began noticing curious patterns in the wastewater..

Multiple sclerosis is triggered by a viral infection

For decades, researchers have suspected that the neurological disease MS may be triggered by a viral infection, but a unique study that looked at 10 million US military personnel over a 20-year period provided the most convincing causal evidence to date. The research indicated that Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection is fundamentally related to the development of MS.

The findings do not mean that EBV infection is the only cause of MS; it is likely that a number of genetic and/or environmental factors must be present for a person to be susceptible to the neurodegenerative condition. But it seems that an EBV infection could be a crucial trigger. . And that means, hypothetically, that an EBV vaccine could prevent the development of MS in the first place.

Global effort performs the first 100% complete sequence of the human genome

The Human Genome Project has been running for decades, publishing its first draft in 2000 and a “complete” genome in 2003. But this only included the euchromatic regions, which comprise about 92% of the total genome. Now, with two additional decades of work and technological advances, the complete human genome of around 3 billion bases has finally been sequenced without gaps.

In other 2022 genetic study news, one of the world’s largest and longest-running investigations has finally published the fruits of 20 years of work. The 12,000 genetic variants that influence human height were published after studying the DNA of five million people..

Impressive results from ‘game-changing’ mRNA skin cancer vaccine trial

Following the incredible success of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in 2020, much work on the technology quickly shifted to explore its potential to treat cancer. Melanoma, in particular, turned out to be the first major cancer target for the technology, and the two big mRNA companies (BioNTech and Moderna) are in the late stages of human trials.

These results from a Phase 2 trial offer the most advanced information to date in the efficacy of an mRNA cancer vaccine. The impressive data revealed that adding mRNA therapy to conventional immunotherapy improved patient outcomes by 44%.

First recording of dying human brain reveals dream-like activity

While EEG was monitoring the brain waves of an 87-year-old man with epilepsy, looking for seizures, the patient suddenly had a heart attack and died. This led the researchers to record 15 minutes of brain activity around the time of death..

They focused on the 30 seconds on either side of when the heart stopped beating and detected increased activity in types of brain waves known as gamma oscillations. These are involved in processes such as dreams, meditation, and memory retrieval, giving insight into what a person may be experiencing in their final moments.

Fecal transplants finally become official medicine

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) of Australia was the First in the world to approve a fecal transplant therapy designed to attack a serious bacterial infection.. The approval went to biotech company BiomeBank for its “microbiome-based therapy product” called BIOMICTRA. The therapy is approved very specifically only to treat infections of Clostridioides difficile bacteria, commonly known as C difference.

Not long after the Australian clearance, the US Food and Drug Administration. followed with similar approval. Targeting the same type of infection, the FDA has approved a fecal transplant therapy from Ferring Pharmaceuticals for use in the United States.

World’s first pig-to-human heart transplant

The patient who received the transplant was a 57-year-old man. with terminal heart disease named David Bennett. Too sick to qualify for a regular heart transplant, Bennett was offered the experimental treatment as a last resort.

Bennett survived for almost two months with a pig’s heart before dying of heart failure. The researchers behind the procedure. they are still investigating exactly how Bennett died as an initial study it did not reveal traditional signs of organ rejection.

New gene therapies become the most expensive drugs in history

The past 12 months have been a parade of increasingly expensive gene therapy approvals. First, the FDA authorized a single gene therapy that targets a rare blood disease and It hit the market with a price tag of $2.8 million.. Then another gene therapy hit the market, this time targeting hemophilia, priced at $3.5 million.

The cost of these unique curative gene therapies is relative to a lifetime of medical care. Thus, pharmaceutical companies claim that these unique gene therapies are ultimately cheaper compared to treatments that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for decades. But questions remain about how health insurers will accommodate these massive one-time payments and whether these multibillion-dollar gene therapies will end up as treatments only for the rich.

Don’t worry: nose picking doesn’t cause Alzheimer’s disease

And perhaps the biggest medical news this year was our exclusive investigation into the most controversial study of 2022. After headlines blasted research reports finding nose picking can cause Alzheimer’s disease, New Atlas spoke to several neuroscientists to learn the details of this seemingly landmark study.

Turns out we’re all fine. A bit of nasal digging is unlikely to have anything to do with the onset of dementia. But the story behind the story turned out to be a perfect example of how hyperbolic science news can amplify unproven speculation.