It’s not easy to say that any particular development in health or medicine was the most important in a given year. But if we had to choose some highlights, we’d opt for these unforgettable events and findings.
We learned many doctors do not disclose financial ties when they publish research.
From left, Douglas A. Warner III, Memorial Sloan Kettering’s board chairman; Dr. José Baselga, its former chief medical officer; and Dr. Craig B. Thompson, its chief executive, at its charity ball in New York last year.CreditRebecca Smeyne for The New York Times
We learned how one city has started to turn the corner on the opioids epidemic.
Dayton, Ohio, had one of the highest opioid overdose death rates in the nation. Now, it may be at the leading edge of a waning phase of the epidemic. While the data are preliminary, a variety of factors contributed to the reduction in deaths: Medicaid expansion paying for treatment; dwindling availability of one particular drug; greater use of naloxone, which can reverse overdoses; a large network of recovery support groups; and, law enforcement and public health workers improving their coordination.
We learned that vaping among young people is a growing national problem.
People with hemophilia, the inability to form blood clots, spend their lives menaced by the prospect of uncontrolled bleeding into a muscle or joint, or even the brain. Experimental gene therapy treatments have rid a few patients — for now, at least — of the condition. It does not yet amount to a cure, and the treatment is imperfect. But some who received the treatments are finding themselves uneasily adjusting to a life with new freedoms.
We learned untreated strep throat leads to heart failure in poor countries.
In the United States and other rich countries, cheap antibiotics cure children with strep throat easily. But in poor countries, strep can result in rheumatic heart disease and a long, slow death sentence. In Rwanda, doctors from a group called Team Heart visit once a year to perform heart valve-replacement surgery for 16 people. But there are thousands more people who need the procedure in a country that has no heart surgeons.
We learned how public health research can be compromised by private interests.