Recent healthcare Discoveries that may help you in the NEAR future!
Today we don’t celebrate Columbus Day for many reasons, but I’d like to share with you several “New Discoveries” in the healthcare world that you might find interesting.
Every day, scientists strive to solve some of medicine’s toughest questions. Today, I’d like to share with you some of the most recent healthcare breakthroughs that tackle painful conditions and deadly diseases.
From gene sequencing at record speeds to identify dangerous mutations, to a treatment that delays Type 1 diabetes for years, today I’ll review these and other recent developments in academic medicine that are helping save the lives of millions of patients.
Before we get started, many of you were appreciative of last week’s newsletter, “Getting ready for Cold and Flu Season”. If you missed it, you can use this link, Here.
Okay, so let’s get you up to speed on the newest and greatest developments in healthcare breakthroughs 🤩
Speedier Sepsis Detection
Blood clots, leaking blood vessels, and organ damage all are possible outcomes of sepsis, the body’s extreme reaction to an infection. Each year in the United States, 1.7 million adults in the U.S. develop sepsis, and at least 350,000 either die in the hospital or are sent to hospice because of it.
Sepsis is a serious condition that happens when the body's immune system has an extreme response to an infection. The body's reaction causes damage to its own tissues and organs. Sepsis can affect anyone, but people who are older, very young, pregnant or have other health problems are at higher risk.
Sepsis survival depends on rapid detection. That’s problematic because there is no one test for sepsis, and its symptoms mimic those of many other conditions.
Now, an artificial intelligence driven program developed at Johns Hopkins Medicine detects sepsis nearly six hours sooner on average than traditional methods.
“Hundreds of lives likely have been saved by the system,” says Albert Wu, MD, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research.
To create the process, called TREWS (Targeted Real-time Early Warning System), experts fed the AI algorithm thousands of previous patients’ health records so it could recognize signs of sepsis.
Once deployed, the AI tool rapidly processes reams of information about current patients.
Multiple sources of data are automatically pulled, including lab tests and vital signs. AI even reads provider notes looking for certain phrases, and it does this continuously.
When the tool identifies an at-risk patient, it fires off an alert to the physician. It includes an explanation of why it has flagging the patient, as well as evidenced-based recommendations for how to proceed.
John Hopkins tested the system in five hospitals with 4,000 clinicians and 590,000 patients over two years. Sepsis-related deaths dropped by 20%, according to a July 2022 study published in Nature.
This is the first case where artificial intelligence was used on a large scale by frontline clinicians in hospitals.
Using this platform, a physician can predict if someone is going to develop kidney failure or heart failure. They can predict that a patient is deteriorating or that they wouldn’t be able to live independently when they left the hospital.
With good data, physicians should be able to predict many things that can help improve patient care.
Vagina on a Chip
Scientific understanding of the vagina is crucial to the health of millions of women, yet it has remained severely limited. That’s partly because of some patients’ hesitation to participate in vagina-related clinical trials but also because research has for so long focused more on men.
Now, a device has been created that functions much like an artificial vagina. The inch-long, clear silicone chip contains human cells and effectively replicates conditions in the real-life organ.
The chips, which are being mass produced by Emulate Inc. (a Boston-based company), will enable researchers to test numerous substances and theories, including whether probiotics boost vaginal health.
They are also making chips using cells from members of different ethnic groups to learn whether they produce divergent results. And they are introducing sperm to the chip to assess how vaginal changes impact fertility.
Hopefully the research collected by these devices will aid scientists in learning more about vaginal health, premature birth and ways to reduce inflammation in the female organs.
Delaying Diabetes by Years
Since the discovery of insulin in 1922, no drug has been able to alter the course of Type 1 diabetes - until recently.
Now the medication teplizumab delays onset of the condition by an average of two years - and sometimes by more than a decade.
That’s a significant development given that 30,000 U.S. patients are diagnosed with the autoimmune condition each year.
In those individuals, the pancreas produces little or no insulin, the hormone responsible for controlling blood sugar levels. Potential long-term consequences include damage to the heart, kidneys, arteries, and eyes. And if blood sugar levels suddenly drop too low, patients can even fall into a coma.
Unlike Type 2 diabetes, which can be forestalled with lifestyle changes, Type 1 diabetes previously had not responded to efforts to prevent or delay it.
Researchers focused on people with a high likelihood of developing the disease, hoping to help them before their immune system destroyed much of the pancreas. They worked with an international network of clinical trial sites, TrialNet, to search for individuals with at least two Type 1 biomarkers and abnormal blood sugar levels. Such individuals are believed to have a lifetime risk of developing the disease that’s close to 100%.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that 43% of participants given the medication developed diabetes during the trial, compared with 72% of those in the placebo group.
Researchers hope that this new strategy of preventive immune therapy can be applied to other autoimmune conditions where blood markers indicate likely disease development, such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.
Record Breaking Gene Sequencing
Gene sequencing to map a patient’s DNA can be crucial to identifying causes of life-threatening conditions. And doing so rapidly can reduce the need for other tests, cut the time patients spend in the hospital, and expedite vital precision treatments.
“Rapid” gene sequencing has generally meant a few weeks. At Stanford Medicine, a team recently shrunk that time to just hours.
The expedited approach, described in the New England Journal of Medicine, won the team a Guinness World Record. You can read more about it, Here.
Here’s an example of a patient benefiting from this new record breaking acheivment:
A 13-year old boy in the sequencing study was suffering from a dangerous cardiac condition, and his organs were beginning to shut down. The team needed to know whether the cause was a passing heart infection or an irreparable DNA mutation. After sequencing revealed a genetic cause in just a few hours, the boy was added to the transplant wait list, and three weeks later, he received a new heart. The standard test results didn’t come back until several weeks after he had the transplant.
How did the team pull off the fast approach?
They took several steps, including harnessing the power of a sequencing machine many times faster than what’s typically used. They also processed the data in real time, as soon as they got it. To avoid overloading the lab’s computer system, they also shifted to computing in the cloud. There, algorithms rapidly scanned the patient’s genetic code for aberrations, and the research team then looked for variants of concern.
The gene sequencing study in which the boy participated included just a dozen patients, but Stanford is now working to roll it out to all those who might benefit. There are also some 20 hospitals worldwide that hope to replicate the approach.
Implantable for Severe Paralysis
Approximately one in 50 Americans, or 5.4 million people, have some form of paralysis. With paralysis, most patients experience a significant decline in their overall health.
Recently, a team has offered new hope for these patients by leveraging implanted brain-computer interface technology to recover lost motor control and enable patients to control digital devices.
The technology uses implanted electrodes to collect movement signals from the brain and decode them into movement commands. It has been shown to restore voluntary motor impulses in patients with severe paralysis due to brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerve or muscle dysfunction.
While the interface technology is in its infancy, the FDA has designated the implantable a “breakthrough device,” reinforcing the need to move this technology to the bedside of patients who need it most.
Predictive Analytics and Hypertension
Often referred to as the “silent killer,” hypertension, or high blood pressure, usually shows no symptoms while increasing risk for serious health problems, including heart disease, heart failure and stroke.
Hypertension (high blood pressure) is when the pressure in your blood vessels is too high (140/90 mmHg or higher). It is common but can be serious if not treated. People with high blood pressure may not feel symptoms. The only way to know is to get your blood pressure checked.
Effective treatment options exist; however, many adults remain unaware that they have hypertension until they experience a significant health crisis.
Using machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, physicians are able to better predict cardiovascular mobilities and enable physicians to select more effective interventions before they occur.
Predictive analytics equip providers with the key that could open the door to preventing hypertension and many other diseases.
THE BOTTOM LINE
“Every once in a while, a new technology, an old problem, and a big idea turn into an innovation.”
“Innovation is taking two things that exist and putting them together in a new way.”
Healthcare is developing with each passing year. New innovations and technologies are being introduced within the industry, creating excitement and hope among medical practitioners, researchers, and patients alike for the future.
More sophisticated means of healthcare delivery will be available. For now, the application of robots, nanotechnology, stem cell therapy and predictive medicine in healthcare all sound like parts of a sci-fi movie to lots of people. However, these technologies could become mainstream easily within the next 30 years if research and developments carry on at the exponential rate that they have been.
Robots are already used in the military and other industries where pin-point precision is needed, so it isn’t a stretch to think they could be coming to healthcare sooner than we think.
In the future, stem cells will be used to create replacement beta cells that produce insulin, thereby allowing people battling with diabetes to eat and drink like those who are not.
Predictive medicine methodologies such as cytomics, genomics and proteomics will help in predicting the probability of a disease outbreak, which will help medical experts and scientists in coming up with preventive measures in order to either prevent the disease altogether or reduce the impact on human life.
I’m here to keep you informed and “up-to-date” on new and exciting innovations in the healthcare world.
If you need help with navigating any of the information presented today, make a point to come see me so that I can help you!
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