10 Exciting Health Breakthroughs That Took Place in 2014

The year of 2014 has seen some promising advances in the health arena. Some of these breakthroughs are new and revolutionary. Others continue to build on past accomplishments. A few take our previous "wisdom" and turn it on its head.

Take a look at our sampling of medical breakthroughs that occurred during 2014.

1) Alzheimer's Blood Test

A blood test that tracks 10 biomarkers has been found to have a 90 percent accuracy rate in predicting a person's risk for Alzheimer's disease or other type of decline in cognition within a three-year period. Research was performed at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington.

In other research from the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine in Jülich, Germany, a turmeric compound may hold promise for the development of a Alzheimer's drug that could increase brain stem cell production.

2) DNA test Diagnoses Infectious Diseases

It takes only a matter of minutes for the diagnostic computer software to sort through millions of bacteria DNA fragments, searching for multiple diseases simultaneously. The usual blood tests can take days or weeks for diagnosis. The new software's computer analysis takes minutes.

Charles Chiu, M.D., professor of laboratory medicine and of medicine, infectious diseases, at the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues have helped in the development of the software.

3) Dead Heart Transplant

A breakthrough technique brings hearts that have stopped beating for as long as 20 minutes back to life for transplantation. This could mean that hearts for transplant won't only need to come from brain-dead donors whose hearts are still beating. It could mean that substantially more hearts can be transplanted.

The new treatment was developed by surgeons in Australia.

4) E-cigarettes

Is the e-cigarette a good thing or a bad thing? Time will tell. An analysis by Virginia Commonwealth University indicates that there are more benefits to using a nicotine-delivery system that is not a traditional cigarette. More study is needed in this area.

5) Fecal Transplant

A fecal transplant involves inserting bacteria from healthy stool into an unhealthy intestine. The intestine is then enabled to fight infection from Clostridium difficile bacteria (C. diff).

Once the initial aversion to the treatment is overcome, the vast majority of fecal transplant recipients experience great health improvement.

6) Healthy Fats

There has been a recent shift from decades-long promotion of a low-fat regimen, to encouraging the consumption of healthy fats, even saturated fats. Obesity is now being seen as the result of eating sugar, an abundance of carbohydrates and processed foods, rather than from fat.

7) Hybrid Cochlear Implant

A new hybrid cochlear implant combines the features of a hearing aid and a cochlear implant. Sound is transmitted to electrodes that are implanted in the cochlea's high-frequency area. It is inserted surgically in patients who have some hearing in lower pitches, but whose hearing is severely lacking in higher ranges.

The hybrid hearing aid improves sensorineural hearing loss, which most often occurs when the inner ear or cochlea has been negatively affected by illness, advancing age, loud noise and inherited tendency to hearing loss. These types of hearing difficulties usually don't improve with traditional hearing aids.

8) Immunotherapy Vaccine

In immunotherapy, immune cells of the patient are used to attack cancer. Two types of pancreatic cancer cells show the immune system how to target pancreatic cancer cells.

Next, genetically altered Listeria monocytogenes, a bacteria, will stimulate the patient's immune system to eliminate pancreatic cancer cells.

Immunotherapy is much easier on the patient than chemotherapy.

9) Stem Cell Treatment

New research has found a way to alter adult stem cells back to an embryonic stage. This could open the door for stem cell therapy without involving stem cells from embryos or genetic manipulation.

The treatment was developed by researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and from Japan.

10) Wireless Pacemaker

This revolutionary pacemaker is the size of a pill. It is not inserted surgically into the chest. Electrical wires don't have to run through a heart's vein. It goes through a groin artery to the heart muscle.

Because it just stimulates one heart chamber, it's only used in someone who has bradycardia. Bradycardia is an irregular slow heartbeat that results in breathlessness, dizziness, fainting and fatigue.

Cardiologist John Hummel of Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center in Columbus is leading a clinical trial for the wireless pacemaker.

These medical strides forward are just a few of the advances researchers have brought to light in 2014. Here's to a brilliant year ahead for 2015!

Sources:

5 Lifesaving Medical Breakthroughs
http://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2014/medical-break...

6 Medical Breakthroughs That Matter
http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20860254_4,00.html

http://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2014/medical-break...
http://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2014/medical-break...

Top Medical Advances of 2014
http://www.newsmaxhealth.com/Health-News/health-advances-2014-year/2014/...

Visit Jody's website at http://www.ncubator.ca

Reviewed December 31, 2014
by Michele Blacksberg RN

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