Word: treatments
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Initially, advances in treatment will probably result in only modest gains. Clinicians will be able to delay onset by several years and lessen the severity of symptoms. But by 2025, control could come to resemble a cure. For Alzheimer's has something in common with other brain disorders such as Parkinson's, Huntington's and mad-cow disease. Like them, it appears to be caused by misfolded proteins--in this case, beta amyloid and tau. And so one day in the 21st century it may become possible to vanquish Alzheimer's with a vaccine that targets these miscreants...
...remarkable results with a protein called vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF2) in restoring circulation in the legs of diabetics and, more impressively, stimulating new vessel growth in patients with severe heart disease. Says former Eli Lilly chairman Randall Tobias: "The day will come when we regard all surgeries, except [treatment of] trauma, as failures of the pharmaceutical industry...
...medical science has had only mixed results with brain-cell transplants. Take the treatment of Parkinson's disease, for example, a condition that is gradually depriving more than 1 million Americans of their ability to move and speak. The disease is caused by the slow deterioration of brain cells that produce dopamine, a chemical essential for the transmission of messages from the brain to the rest of the body. A decade ago, Swedish researchers started implanting dopamine-producing cells from human fetuses into the brains of Parkinson's patients. The treatment improved the mobility of many of the patients...
...medical care in the next 20 or 30 years will spring from a growing reliance on "smart" technology. Computer chips will become ever faster, smaller and less expensive. Medical instruments and sensors will continue to shrink. (One that already has is the formerly big, lumbering machine needed for radiation treatment; today mobile electron accelerators are portable enough to be used during some cancer operations, reducing the number of healthy cells that are damaged...
This new view has sparked innovations that will manage the process and keep it from killing large numbers of people. "We are going to see a real shift from diagnosis and treatment to prediction and prevention," declares California surgeon Susan Love, author of Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book. Indeed, if all goes well with current clinical trials, women at high risk for breast cancer will soon be able to be screened with a device that removes a sample of breast cells through the nipple. If any cells show signs of the early mutations that lead to cancer, doctors...