For a second year in a row, the COVID-19 Pandemic has dominated health news headlines. You may have missed some of the most amazing medical cases and breakthrough this year. Scientists made great strides in the world of organ transplants, cancer treatment trials and gut microbiome research, and doctors shared some amazing treatment success stories.
You may have missed some cool medical stories this year.
The baby born at 21 weeks is alive.
The mother and son are Curtis and his mom. The University of Alabama at Birmingham has an image on their website.
The twins were only 21 weeks and 1 day into their pregnancies, meaning they were 19 weeks premature. C'Asya did not respond to treatment and died shortly after birth, but her vitals began to improve. He had only a 1% chance of survival according to the doctors. He was given constant care to maintain his breathing and body temperature, and to take in adequate nutrition. At 3 months old, he was able to come off his ventilator, and 9 months later, he was discharged from the hospital. After six months at home, the family received a Guinness World Record certificate acknowledging that they were the most premature baby in the world to survive.
A baby born at 21 weeks has a world record.
There are some good videos for you.
A pig is connected to a human.
Joe Carrotta is a doctor at NYU Langone Health.
With human organs in short supply for transplant surgeries, scientists have long been working to make animal-to-human transplants safe. In a landmark experiment, doctors connected a pig kidneys to a human and watched as it produced urine. The family of a brain-dead patient gave permission for the experiment to be conducted. The team used a genetically modified pig's kidneys to create a vaccine against alpha-gal, a type of sugar that can cause an immune reaction in humans. The experiment could signal a big step forward for animal-to-human transplants.
Pig kidneys are successfully hooked up to a human patient.
The treatment of skin cancer was boosted by poop transplants.
The image is from Shutterstock.
Immunotherapies don't work for all cancer patients. About 40% of patients with advanced melanoma get long-term benefits from immunotherapy drugs. A small study published in February in the journal Science suggests that tweaking cancer patients' gutbacteria can help boost the effectiveness of drugs.
In the study, scientists collected stool from melanoma patients who responded well to immunotherapy and then transplanted the patients' feces into the guts of 15 patients who had never responded to the drugs. Six of the 15 patients who received a transplant responded to immunotherapy for the first time, showing either tumor reduction or disease stabilization that lasted more than a year. The scientists plan to investigate why the six patients who received the poop transplant didn't seem to benefit from it.
Cancer patients weren't responding to therapy. They got a transplant.
Discovery has a potential weapon against the superbugs.
Rodolfo Parulan Jr. has an image credit.
A new way to take down drug-resistantbacteria was discovered in a study conducted in lab dishes. This new weapon could make existing antibiotics more effective, thus reducing the need for new antibiotics. The study was published in June in the journal Science, and it showed that Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa are resistant to multiple drugs and rank among the leading causes of hospital-acquired infections. The team searched for a way to block the enzyme that protects the bugs from antibiotics. The molecule the scientists identified made antibiotics more potent, depending on the antibiotic being used and the strain being targeted. They will have to see if the same strategy can work in humans.
A new discovery could help take down drug-resistantbacteria.
A second person is cured of HIV.
The image is from Shutterstock.
The woman now known as the Esperanza Patient was diagnosed with HIV in 2013). Doctors can't find the virus in her body. The woman's immune system has apparently eliminated HIV from her system, despite the fact that she did not receive a bone marrow transplant or any drug intervention. This happened once before in a woman named Loreen Willenberg. The two women's cases give scientists hope of finding a cure for HIV/AIDS.
The patient's immune system naturally cures HIV in the second case of its kind.
A small trial of a cancer vaccine shows promise.
The image is from Shutterstock.
An experimental "cancer vaccine" works by training immune cells to better recognize and attack cancer cells in the body, without harming healthy cells. In a small trial of eight patients with advanced melanoma, the vaccine helped prevent their tumors from growing for years after they werevaccinated. All eight patients were alive by the end of the four-year follow-up period. Two people had experienced cancer recurrence and received additional treatments called "checkpoint blockades" which rip the brakes off of immune cells known as T cells. The checkpoint blockades were highly effective in combination with the T cell-targeting cancer vaccine. More and larger trials are still needed to know if such vaccines can be used in tandem with other cancer treatments.
The vaccine helped keep melanoma under control for a long time.
The supplement helps kids grow.
The image is from the science photo library.
A new supplement helped children who were starving put on weight and gain height at a faster rate than children who were given a standard "ready-to-use supplementary food." What made the difference? The new supplement helped to restore the kids' gutbacteria so they were more like the healthy children.
Kids' gut microbes are "stunted" by malnourishment because they don't have enough fuel to grow and multiply. A team of scientists came up with a formula to deliver calories to kids and help restore their gutbacteria after a small pilot trial. In a larger trial published in April in The New England Journal of Medicine, they found that the supplement helped kids grow faster but also increased the concentrations of key proteins in their blood, including those involved in bone growth and nerve and brain development.
It is possible to change the gut bacteria of kids who are not well fed.
The vaccine stimulates immune cells.
The image is from Sergey Menis.
The first in-human trials of a new HIV vaccine stirred up excitement, as it showed 97 percent success in stimulating a rare set of immune cells that play a key role in fighting the virus.
The human immunodeficiency virus poses a huge challenge for vaccine developers because it's so fast to change, but in this case, the researchers targeted the pathogen using a unique approach: They designed their vaccine to target a specific subset of B cells, a kind of immune cell that produces "broad In a trial of 48 people, 98% of the participants produced neutralizing antibodies. The trial didn't test whether the vaccine prevented HIV infections, but it hints that the vaccine may work well.
HIV vaccine stimulates rare immune cells in early human trials.
Centenarians' gutbacteria may show how they survive.
Birthday cake photo via Shutterstock
A study published in July in the journal Nature suggests that people who live to age 100 may have some of their gut bacteria to thank. 160 centenarians were examined in the study, who were on average, 107 years old. The researchers compared the centenarians' gut microbiota to those of people of different ages. The centenarians had a distinct gut microbe signature, meaning it appeared in higher or lower abundance than the younger group. They had higher levels of bile acids, which are produced by the liver and released into the intestine. They produced high concentrations of the secondary bile acid isoalloLCA, which the researchers found to have potent antimicrobial properties.
More research is needed to find out if the centenarians' gut bugs help them survive to such advanced ages and if this knowledge could be used to boost other people's longevity.
People who live to 100 have unique gutbacteria signatures.
The vaccine cuts the rate of cancer in women.
The image is from Shutterstock.
A recent study found that the human papillomaviruses vaccine has reduced the number of cervical cancer cases.
The vaccine was most effective when it was given to the youngest group of women, and they had a lower incidence of cancer. There was a reduction in the number of cases in women who had been vaccine free between the ages of 14 and 16 and between the ages of 16 and 18.
The vaccine slashed the rates of cancer among women in the UK.
Live Science published the original article.
