Word: chronically
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fledgling field took another step forward in July, when doctors at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center performed the first gene therapy on a woman with rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic disease caused by the immune system's running amuck and attacking the body's connective tissue. Their strategy was to expose cells in the swollen tissue lining their patient's finger joints to genetically engineered viruses. These viruses carried a gene responsible for a protein that blocks the action of interleukin-1, a substance that stimulates immune-system activity. Without that stimulation, the doctors hope, the immune system will halt...
Medical advances are already having a pronounced effect on the seniors' quality of life. A yearly federal survey of 20,000 people 65 and older showed a steady decrease through the 1980s in chronic disabilities of all kinds--with the most dramatic reductions in the 85-plus segment. "It is evolutionary, not revolutionary," says Kenneth Manton, a demographer at Duke University in North Carolina. Nonetheless, it is a welcome relief for the aging. "Life is a lot better now for older people than it was just 20 years ago," says Dr. Harold Karpman, a Beverly Hills, California, cardiologist...
...known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which torments its victims with clouds of horrific anxieties and forces them, like primitive priests propitiating unknown gods, to indulge in senseless and repetitive rituals. Not long ago, this disease--along with most other so-called mental illnesses--was considered to be a chronic, untreatable condition, a psychological crippler whose roots lay hidden deep within the brain's mysterious recesses...
...Research finds that for reasons unclear, men with chronic BRONCHITIS may be 50% more likely to suffer a heart attack...
...today nothing has changed. The 2-to-1 split persists. A million more drug-treatment slots are still urgently needed; an additional 1.5 million chronic drug abusers are on probation with no treatment available. And antidrug-education programs in schools have grown in number but not much in effectiveness. Last week a federal study found that drug users among children ages 12 to 17 have more than doubled in four years, to nearly 11%. If nothing is done, that percentage is likely to double again in five years. "It's tragic but not surprising," says Rosalind Branningan of Drug Strategies...