Top 20 medical breakthroughs for women

This year’s biggest advances are changing the face and future of your health. From cancer and Alzheimer’s disease to eating disorders and obesity, Health magazine reveals 20 breakthroughs you need to know about now.

1. Obesity
Controlling appetite with leptin
The hot word in obesity this year was leptin. When a connection between this hormone and weight loss was first discovered in 1994, researchers helped fat, overfed lab mice stay slim. And they believed they could do with people what they did with mice: Inject some leptin, and kiss pounds good-bye. Humans, it turned out, were more complicated. When they lost weight their bodies became stingier with calories consumed and more efficient in retaining existing weight. Not willing to give up on leptin, scientists at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City started looking at the hormone as a possible weight-loss-
maintenance drug. They discovered through scans that brain activity in areas connected to restraint and control declines after weight loss. Hike leptin levels, however, and the areas become more active. Michael Rosenbaum, PhD, and colleagues now see new possibilities for leptin in long-term weight control.

2. Infection control
Cracking the MRSA code
More Americans now die each year of the nasty staph infection MRSA (18,650) than from AIDS (15,000). Fortunately, new prevention and treatment options for the bug known officially as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus have emerged. One is a protective nasal gel (XF-73) designed to kill the microbes early on, upon contact, with every breath. (Past anti-MRSA drugs focused on preventing bacteria from spreading or stunting the bacteria’s growth.) Also, surgeons began experimenting on animals this year with MRSA-fighting stitches coated with a virus that fights the MRSA bug but doesn’t affect humans. Each tiny hole for stitches is a potential entry point for MRSA or other stubborn infections, so the idea of fortifying dozens of these sites to prevent chances of future infection is brilliant.

3. Addiction
Using the ER to help alcoholics
It’s no secret that alcoholics and drug abusers visit emergency rooms more often than the average Jane. So this year the American College of Surgeons (ACS) decided to turn that fact of ER life into something more positive. They unveiled SBI — screening and brief intervention — during which ER docs or counselors conduct brief drug or alcohol interventions right on the spot. The idea stems from the belief that emergency settings offer an ideal place to provide wake-up calls to patients who don’t yet have severe substance addictions. Such interventions have been shown to reduce a return to the trauma or ER center by 50 percent.

4. Infertility
Good news for frozen embryos
Freezing embryos allows couples to have several in vitro fertilization cycles from the same egg collection or enables them to hold off for a better time for implantation in a mother who may be undergoing chemotherapy or may have other issues that require her to delay pregnancy. And a new, landmark study from Denmark found that babies born from previously frozen embryos have no increased risk of low birth weight, birth defects, or compromised health, compared with those born from “fresh” ones. According to the research, freezing caused no adverse repercussions, and, in fact, the babies born from the frozen embryos weighed more. That’s good news for moms and babies.

5. Alzheimer’s
New research for brain diseases
Scientists in England this spring won permission from British medical authorities to create new embryos called cytoplasmic hybrids, eggs from rabbits or cows that have had their nuclei replaced with human genetic code. (The United Kingdom puts far fewer restrictions on stem cell use in federal research than the United States does.) No Frankensteins at work here: The goal is to produce stem cells that will help determine the causes of and find treatments for incurable and debilitating conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

6. Colon cancer
Targeted treatments may save lives
When oncologists discovered that different genes (BRCA1, BRCA2, HER2) were linked with different types of breast cancer, lifesaving targeted therapies were soon developed. Now there’s similar positive news for people with colon cancer. Until this summer, late-stage colon cancers were treated pretty much the same — but the discovery of a mutated KRAS colon cancer gene has helped change that. As a result, one-size-fits-all chemotherapy is being replaced with more-personalized treatment that could save lives, according to Eric Van Cutsem, MD, PhD, the Belgian oncologist who shared these findings at an American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting. 

7. Smarter sweets
More reasons to eat chocolate
We know that dark chocolate cocoa powder has up to three times the antioxidants found in green tea, plus twice the antioxidants in red wine; that’s good for your heart. And studies have shown that dark chocolate’s polyphenols affect serotonin levels in the brain; that’ll boost your mood. But this year dark chocolate has gained even more favor in medical circles. In one study, heart-transplant patients showed a decreased risk of clogged arteries two hours after consuming 40 grams of dark chocolate. In another, researchers from the University of Illinois found that subjects who ate a 22 gram CocoaVia dark chocolate bar daily for two months lowered their blood pressure and cholesterol levels. And investigation is underway to see if dark chocolate can be used to decrease PMS symptoms. Sweet news for us all.

8. Sleep
How too little hurts women’s hearts
Talk about alarm clocks: After studying both women and men who have trouble sleeping, Duke University Medical Center researchers this spring discovered new links between sleep deprivation and the risk of heart attack. In particular, they learned why sleep problems had more of an impact on female hearts than they had on the cardio systems of men. Turns out women may be more prone to long-term inflammation in their bloodstreams, which results in increased risks of both heart disease and diabetes. In fact, “Women who reported taking a half-hour or longer to fall asleep showed the worst risk profile,” lead researcher Edward Suarez, PhD, explains.

In the sleep trials, Suarez and his colleagues found higher levels of three important signals in the bloodstreams of poor sleepers: C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, both of which are associated with inflammation in numerous tissues, and fibrinogen, a protein that’s associated with heart disease. The study is preliminary but notable because it focused on sleep, disease triggers, and gender.

9. Breast cancer: Another mammo option
A recent Mayo Clinic study of nearly 1,000 women showed that new, gamma-ray cameras detected three times as many tiny tumors (as small as two-fifths of an inch in diameter) as standard mammography in women with dense breasts. This development gives high-risk women another early-detection option besides mammograms and more-expensive MRIs.

10. Breast cancer: An herbal breakthrough
Black cohosh, a plant in the buttercup family, has been shown to stop the growth of some breast cancer cells, according to new research conducted by a French pharmaceutical company and funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. Researchers attribute the cancer-cell death to the agent triterpene glycoside, which is found in black cohosh extract. Should you take it? Ask your doctor. Past research has shown that black cohosh can interfere with certain kinds of chemotherapy and has some adverse side effects. Plus, studies so far have been done only on mice.

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